


Where the Steam Rises

by starbunny



Series: Turn the Tide [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon Divergence - Avengers (2012), Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Follows the story of The Avengers, Friendship, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magic, Magical Realism, Pre-Avengers (2012), can be read as a standalone, mostly canon-compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2019-10-21 14:05:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17644250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starbunny/pseuds/starbunny
Summary: Steven Grant Rogers never expected to wake up in a whole new century after crashing the Valkyrie, but here he was anyway, and Bucky was still gone.(Or the Avengers AU with a twist of magic)





	1. A New Beginning

This was a nightmare. It _had_ to be.

None of this was real.

The cars on the roads were strange, the buildings too tall, bright lights and sounds everywhere and why-

Why did the air smell so _wrong?_

Steve took in a strangled gasp as he bolted down the street, ignoring the wailing sirens from cars roaring behind him.

Where was he?!

He had woken up on a bed just a few minutes ago entirely out of place, with the distinct feeling that something was wrong, and when he fought off those agents in black and broke out from that fake room only to be thrown straight into this nightmarish foreign world with alien noises and weird scents, Steve’s mind just turned completely blank.

There was too much input everywhere, the strangeness of the colours everywhere, the smells, the sounds, even what people looked like –

It was all too much to process.

Then without even a second to think or wrap his head around what exactly was happening, an alarm blared out. People started to chase him down left and right, shouting, grabbing him, and Steve responded the only way he knew how.

With instinct.

Fight. Run. Escape.

Which led him to now, out on the roads, trying to escape a horde of shiny black cars hell-bent on chasing him down.

“Captain Rogers, stand _down!_ ”

Steve ignored it, heart racing and mind in overdrive. He dashed down the road, hopping over a barricaded manhole and sprinting down some more.

He needed to get these cars off his tail as fast as he could – they were fast, much faster than any car he knew - and Steve quickly scanned his surroundings. Trees, lamps, a crossroad in front, a shophouse to the left and yes, there-

Steve swerved down into a small alleyway, knocking over a trashcan and spilling garbage across the pavement.

There was loud screeching of brakes behind him, sounds of car doors slamming shut, then thundering footsteps. Steve sprung forth, quickly nearing a tall fence blocking his exit right at the end.

Too high to jump over. And nothing in sight to help him climb over either.

Steve raised his hand, reaching deep within him into that pool of energy he knew lay dormant at the pit of his stomach.

_Pure, raw magic._

It answered his call and spluttered to life, a glowing blue solid block materialising at his forearm, quickly shaping and moulding itself into the shape of Steve’s trusty shield – a near perfect rendition of a curved discus, polished and sleek.

His shield locked into place, familiar weight bearing down, and with a huff, Steve hurled it straight into the wall, angled upwards.

The cement gave way with a loud crunch, shield lodged in deep. Steve leapt up.

The shield took his weight with ease, not giving way in the slightest as Steve propelled himself up further, vaulting across the fence and dropping into a roll as he landed.

“Captain, stop!”

Again, Steve ignored it, dematerialising his shield with a thought and barely glancing back to see the horde of black masked agents trapped behind the fence before bolting off.

That should hold them off for a bit.

\----------

It did, thankfully.

Steve hadn’t seen a single hair or sleeve of the mysterious black agents for the last two blocks, and he heaved a sigh of relief.

Whoever they were, whatever they wanted, they were all gone, and Steve was just about to slow down to a jog and _finally_ wrap his head around what exactly was happening and where the hell he was when he heard the roar of something like a jet engine, a flash of blue and-

A robot, an actual fucking _robot_ , dropped down from the sky right in front of him.

Steve startled back, eyes wide.

What the fuck.

It was like something stepped out from those science fiction movies or books of some sort. In gleaming red and gold and covered with smooth metal plates from head to toe, his new foe stared at him, completely expressionless, before it raised a hand and-

- _Waved..?_

“Captain. Pleasure.”

Steve flinched at the mechanical voice. It sounded so…real. He looked hard at the robot’s eyes – or at least the glowing blue lights that mimicked eyes – before swallowing.

“You’re not an easy man to find, are you?” The robot shrugged and took a step closer. “So anyway, I know today’s been a rather shitty day for you, I get it, we all have shitty days-”

Another step, but Steve stood his ground. No hasty movements. He had no idea what this robot was capable of. All he knew was that it smelled weird, almost like those Hydra weapons from before – with the typical burnt plastic stench of magic, but with none of the usual nuances normal magic had. Just empty, distinctly artificial, something most definitely _dangerous_.

“-I have pretty shitty days too, maybe more so than most, so I totally get you. But-”

The robot took yet another step, one step too close into Steve’s space, and that instantly set his instincts on fire, the hairs on the back of his neck tingling.

Steve’s fingers clenched into a fist, shield materialising in a heartbeat. He really didn’t want to fight, but he would, if he had to.

“Woah, woah wait-”

The robot raised its palms in appeasement, but the fresh glow and whiff of magic radiating out from its palms said otherwise, and Steve struck out without hesitating.

He hurled the shield straight at the robot’s face and immediately made a run for it.

There was a loud ‘clink’ behind him, before the roar of blasters kicking in, and Steve cursed, sprinting away as fast as he could.

The chase started anew.

The mechanical monstrosity was keeping up remarkably well, much too close for Steve’s comfort. He tossed a few more hasty shield throws its way – most missing completely as the robot flew out of the way. _Flew_.

“HEY! Could you just please wait, or calm down, or stop throwing magic around – in whatever order you feel like doing those in because I’m just trying to help- oof!” 

Steve’s shield finally hit its mark and flipped the robot over, but it immediately raised its arms to regain its balance with its blasters.

“WAIT!!”

Steve sped forth.

He had no idea where he was going, what _anything_ was happening really, but he knew he was at a severe disadvantage. This robot man was encased completely in armour, it was fast, it could fly, it had unknown combat capabilities and Steve was just one man. A serum-enhanced man with magic sure, but a single man nonetheless.

If he could escape indoors, force the fight to somewhere enclosed where this robot no longer had the advantage of flight, maybe, just _maybe_ he could find a way to stop this enemy and escape for real.

Steve cast a cursory glance to the buildings lining the street, all passing by in a blur, before immediately making a sharp turn and lunging for the nearest apartment door. But his fingers barely brushed the handle before he was rudely uprooted from the ground by his arm, wind roaring in his ears.

Steve’s stomach lurched at the sudden absence of ground beneath him, all his weight sinking heavily into that one point of his arm where the robot was dangling him from. Steve gasped, legs kicking uselessly in the air as the robot dragged him upwards higher still.

“Look, I’m not trying to hurt you or anything but-”

Steve twisted over to punch the robot in the face with his free arm.

It was utterly ineffective, the metal didn’t even bend, and Steve quickly grabbed hold of the robot’s other wrist, with some kind of rocket power shooting out and propelling it in the air.

Steve paused for a short second, considering.

“Uh…” The robot started. “Are we holding hands now..? Because I have a girlfriend and I would hate for any misund- woah!”

Steve twisted the arm back with every bit of strength his serum-enhanced body could muster, forcibly angling the rocket blasts away and throwing the robot off balance.

A sharp yelp.

And the unyielding metallic fingers finally released Steve, gravity taking hold again. Steve tucked himself in, quickly concentrated his magic to form a thick layer at his soles to break his fall before scrambling back up and diving for the same door again.

But a hard knock to Steve’s knee sent him toppling over, and he growled when the complete weight of the robot dropped onto him, hands scrambling to hold him down.

That of course only made Steve fight back even harder, conjuring up a fresh shield and slamming it hard into the robot over and over till his muscles burned but it was utterly useless. The metal stayed insufferably intact.

Another swing and the robot caught Steve’s left wrist, wrapping around tight in an inexorable grip. Steve jerked back in panic, but the robot was strong, even stronger than Steve, and his wrist was easily pinned down.

The robot reached out to grab Steve’s other arm, and Steve immediately choked out a frustrated growl, lashing out with all the magic he could summon. His right-handed magic had always been a level sloppier than his left, but energy pulsed to life nonetheless, fuelled by desperation, and a bright blue shield with a sharp serrated edge materialised on his right arm, thicker and heavier than normal.

“Hey just calm-”

Steve drove it as hard as he could into the robot’s head with a yell. 

There was a loud crunch as the metal finally, _finally_ gave away. Steve used it as leverage to toss the robot aside as far as he could, panting heavily and quickly putting some distance between them.

The robot floundered about for a bit, but the rocket blasts at its palms and feet flared back to life and it quickly stood back up, staring hard at Steve with its broken face.

“Ow – seriously what the hell Cap! That’s a multi-billion dollar suit you just damaged!”

Suit? Then the robot felt at its face, felt the giant gash though the metal before inching to the edges of the gold plate covering its face and pulling hard.

The face plate came off with a loud groan, tossed aside casually, and Steve was fully expecting to see a bunch of wires and lights and all sorts of wacky tech but instead-

He saw a _face_. A human face. 

Steve flinched hard, shield flickering away in shock.

Oh god he almost killed-

“What?” The man underneath raised an eyebrow. “Distracted by my dashing good looks?”

A person like any other, the man had an oddly cut beard, but his eyes- oh god-

“…Howard?” Steve breathed out.

“Okay…Not the answer I was expecting, and no, not Howard. Stark, yes, but Howard, no.”

“What?”

The man sighed and stepped forward.

Steve’s eyes narrowed at that, and the man got the message, raising his arms in a placating gesture.

“Right, so I guess it’s introductions time. You…everyone knows you, you don’t need to introduce yourself, and then there’s me – wait, everyone knows me too, but-”

“Who are you?” Steve demanded.

The man paused, looking aside for a short second before returning his gaze onto Steve.

“I’m Tony. Tony Stark, Howard was my dad, you…knew him, didn’t you?”

“Your…dad?”

Steve took a step back, completely confused.

This man in front of him looked almost _Howard’s_ age, even older perhaps, how could that-

“Okay uh…I know this is all weird for you and I don’t know how to break this to you-”

“Break what?”

“Do you know Slee- JARVIS, did Sleeping Beauty exist back in the good old days? …Yes? Okay great! So Sleeping Beauty, that’s uh…basically a summary of what happened to you, princess. Eternal sleep of death. Stuck in a hidden castle that nobody could find. Except it wasn’t a castle and minus true love’s kiss and the dashing prince- Well I guess _I_ could be the dashing prince if you-”

“What are you saying?” Steve interrupted, getting more agitated.

There was a long pause.

“…You’ve been asleep. For seventy years.”

Steve waited.

The man didn’t laugh. 

He was _serious_.

Steve took in a ragged breath and stepped back again, staring hard at the man that looked so much like Howard but wasn’t him.

“What..?”

The man – Tony – sighed.

“I’m seriously the last and worst person that should give you this talk. Aren’t there people trained for these kind of things?” He mumbled to himself before looking at Steve. “Look…How about we have this talk elsewhere?”

Steve didn’t disagree.


	2. Meeting Stark

It was still a nightmare.

Stark – no, not Stark, Stark was somebody else. _Tony_ brought Steve back to this large glass tower (Stark Tower, or whatever it was called), took him up the biggest, quietest elevator Steve had been in, and then settled him down into one of the fanciest rooms ever, offering Steve a drink.

Steve declined, and Tony just shrugged, pouring him a glass of juice anyway and setting it down in front of him. Then he got out from the robotic suit, sitting down across Steve.

Tony really looked so much more like Howard outside the suit, Steve couldn’t help but notice. The eyes, the shape of his jaw, the facial features. There was also a curious blue glow emanating from his chest, smelling faintly of that strange blend of magic that was definitely nothing close to biological. What was that? Was that normal..?

Tony then proceeded to explain everything to Steve.

There were things he knew. The Valkyrie. Schmidt. The ice. All recounted like it was ancient history, like it happened so long ago, even though it was just _yesterday_ for Steve.

And then there were things that he didn’t know. Suspended animation. The ice. The future.

Tony showed Steve some articles on something called the ‘Internet’, showed him some pictures, videos, and halfway through it all, Steve just completely shut down.

He shoved the metal tablet thing (or whatever Tony called it) aside and curled up on the floor, taking deep breaths. 

His head was pounding, everything seemed unreal, and-

“Uh…You okay, Cap?”

Steve didn’t respond. Okay? How was he supposed to be _okay?_ He missed seventy years and everything’s different and Howard married and had a son and fuck, _seventy years-_

“Cap? Hello?”

God, Bucky would-

Steve flinched hard, insides immediately going cold.

Oh that’s right, Bucky was still gone. He fell from the train and he was gone. He was gone before Steve crashed the Valkyrie and he was still gone now, seventy years later.

That hasn’t changed.

Steve bit his lip.

Oh god, _Bucky_.

Something awful and bitter rose up like a wave, and Steve tucked his head deeper into his knees as tears pooled in his eyes, pouring out uncontrollably.

Why-

_Seventy years._

This was all wrong.

“I’ll be uh outside if you need anything. Just. Shout? Raise a hand? Sing the national anthem? Look, I don’t know, just-” Tony sighed. “…I’ll be outside.”

Steve didn’t respond, barely heard the footsteps leave and the door slide shut either. Just sat there in a corner with tears running down his face and lost in his own thoughts, unable to find the energy to move or do anything.

He had no idea how long he was in the room, but his neck was stiff and his face was dry when he became aware to the sounds coming from outside the room.

Tony’s footsteps. The faintest rhythmic breathing. And-

Steve peered up from his knees to look at the door, frowning slightly.

High heels? A lady’s voice.

“…You kidnapped _Captain America?!_ ” Somebody was yelling.

There was a rustling noise. More footsteps, stopping right outside the door.

“No. Nuh-uh, I did not kidnap him. If anyone kidnapped him, it’s your best friend Agent Phil from SHIELD.”

“ _Tony!_ ”

A disapproving click of a high heel and a groan from Tony. 

“What?! I didn’t do anything wrong. I was just minding my own business in the lab working on a new repulsor prototype when JARVIS called to say that there was a certain Capsicle was found, defrosted and running loose in Times Square.”

“How did you even- _Did you hack SHIELD?!_ ”

 “What, like that’s wrong or something? You know they would have done the same to me - if they _could_ , that is.”

“Where is he anyway?”

“Last I checked, still in the room where I left him. This room.”

A short silence. Steve craned his neck to listen more when they started conversing again.

“…Is he okay?” The lady asked, shrill yelling diminished to a soft, even-toned murmur.

“I didn’t do anything to him!”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Nuh-uh. You were giving me the look. You know, _the_ look. The look when-”

“Tony, please. I know how you feel about him and-”

“Point is: I didn’t do anything. I just brought him here, explained some things to him and left him alone in the room. How am I the villain in this?! It was _SHIELD_ who messed up – being the idiotic buffoons they are – freaking him out and then losing him on the streets! Seriously, how hard is it to keep track of one walking American flag that throws glowing frisbees for a living?”

SHIELD? What was SHIELD? Were they those black agents chasing him down just down? What-

The doors slid open, and Steve immediately jerked up at the noise, coming face to face with Tony and the mysterious lady, a petite blonde dame with bright eyes.

“Oh hey Cap.” Tony waved at him before he gestured to the dame beside him. “This is Pepper. Pepper, Cap. Cap, Pepper.”

“Uhm…Hello Captain Rogers. It’s an honour.” The dame – Pepper – smiled shyly, reaching out for a handshake.

Steve shook her hand, forcing a stiff smile as he met her eyes.

“Steve. It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Just call me Pepper please,” Pepper said. “It’s nice to meet you too, Steve.”

“What? First names already? That’s not fai-”

Pepper silenced Tony with a look, the man grumbling something under his breath.

She then knelt down to the floor, bringing her eyes level to Steve’s.

“I…I’m sorry, I just-” She started, before shaking her head. “I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. Just…It must be terrible.”

Steve swallowed once.

“I just want you to know that we’ll try to help you in any way we can. To…uhm…adjust. And you’re welcome to stay here. As long as you need.” Pepper smiled.

“Hey, we didn’t discuss this. And I technically own the building – it has my _name_ on the lease and everything – so you can’t just assume I’ll say y-”

Pepper shot Tony a look.

“-But…it’s not a _no_ either. It’s still up for discussion.”

“I don’t want to be a bother,” Steve said, voice tight as he started to get up. He’s just so _tired_. “I can leave.” 

But before Steve could even step towards the door, a robotic voice suddenly boomed from the ceiling.

“Sir, if I may have your attention please.”

Steve jumped, immediately looking around.

“JARVIS? Didn’t I mute you?” Tony asked, looking completely unconcerned that there was a sentient voice coming from the ceilings. 

“What’s that?” Steve tensed, a twitch away from letting loose his magic and making a run for it again.

“It’s just my AI,” Tony hurriedly said. “Artificial intelligence. He’s harmless, really. Can’t hurt you. Doesn’t even have a body-”

“Doesn’t have a body?!” Steve spluttered.

“Sir-” The robotic voice resounded again more urgently.

“Ugh, I knew you’ll freak out so-” Tony let out a dramatic sigh. “You know what, I’ll explain it later - and what, JARVIS? This better be good.”

“I apologise for interrupting sir, but given the circumstance, it seemed imperative to let you know - Director Nick Fury from SHIELD is downstairs, sir. He’s insisting to-”

“What? The one-eyed pirate?” Tony grimaced, just as Pepper exclaimed “Nick Fury?!”.

“Tell him consultation hours are over,” Tony continued. “If he wants to meet, he needs to fill up a form at the desk and wait five working days – actually _ten_ working days after that shit he pulled off back at-”

“I’m afraid he’s not looking to see you. He’s asking for Captain Rogers, sir.”

Steve froze.

“Oh. Huh.”

“He’s being very insistent sir. Perhaps it would be best if-”

“Who’s Nick Fury? What’s SHIELD?”

“The men in black? M16? All mean-looking and wearing sunglas-”

_“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”_

“They’re an intelligence agency. Spies? You had those back in the stone age, didn’t you? In any case, they were the ones that dug you out from the ice.”

“Are they enemies?”

“Well that’s the million dollar question isn’t it?” Tony shrugged.

“Sir I-”

“STARK!” A loud voice bellowed from somewhere outside the room, and Tony gave an exaggerated sigh.

“Security breach, JARVIS, what the hell? I thought we agreed that no pirates were allowed to step foot in this property?”

“My protocols were overridden, sir.”

“Well thanks for the _early_ warning.”

There was some stomping outside, and then the door slid open, revealing a menacing-looking black man dressed in all black with an eyepatch covering an eye.

“Stark.” The man nodded towards Tony, before turning to Steve. “Captain Rogers.”

Steve blinked at him.

“I’m Nick Fury, Director of SHIELD. I need to speak with you.”

\-----------

“Look Captain, we’re sorry about that little show back there-”

“ _Show?_ ” Steve snapped. “You mocked up a room to look like the 1940s and _lied_ to me.”

“Wow. And here I was wondering what you guys had to do to piss off Mr Virtuous over there and - _wow_. Unimpressed,” Tony whistled.

“We thought it best to break it to you slowly,” the black man said evenly, as if that justified everything.

“You lied to a national hero. That’s basically committing treason so-”

“We’re not your enemies, Captain.” Fury adamantly ignored Tony, focusing on Steve.

And Steve just sighed.

“You have to understand, we had no idea what mental state you’d been in after seventy years, so we took some…precautions. We had every intention of explaining everything to you once you were ready,” Fury explained.

When Steve didn’t respond, the man pressed on.

“You were part of the SSR, weren’t you?”

Steve looked up and nodded. Finally something familiar.

“Agent Carter and Howard Stark were the founding members of SHIELD. What you knew as SSR – back in the day – is now SHIELD. So I can personally assure you that we are not your enemies.”

Peggy founded SHIELD..? SSR _is_ SHIELD..?

“I can understand if you don’t trust us, but at least just give us a chance to explain and prove to you that we have your best intere-”

“Where’s Peggy then? Or Howard?”

A long silence followed, with Fury and Tony exchanging their first mutual non-hostile glance since being in the same room together, and that itself spoke volumes.

“…So they’re dead,” Steve muttered very quietly, heart sinking. And he thought his day couldn’t get any worse.

“Car accident,” Tony said, strangely nonchalant.

“Agent Carter’s circumstance is…complicated,” Fury said, tone softening. “She’s alive but…” Then he trailed off, and Steve had heard enough, shaking his head sadly.

“If you come back with us, we can explain everything. I don’t know what Stark promised you, but we have prepared a safe place for you, with trained personnel and facilities at our headquarters to help you-”

“Wait a second. Are you _poaching_ him from me?! I’ll have you know that I’m a multi-billionaire, and I have more than enough resources to take care of one lone defrosted super soldier.”

“SHIELD is fully equipped to provide all the support Captain Rogers needs to adjust to these…new times.”

Steve kept silent.

Everything was moving too fast. One second he was prepared to die, drowning in icy water, and another second he was catapulted seventy years into the future with Bucky dead, Howard dead, and Peggy dead - or more likely about to be dead.

Everyone was gone. Everything he knew was _gone_.

Steve’s thoughts started to spiral, while Tony and Fury continued to argue in the background.

“-You’re hardly the picture of perfect health yourself, Stark. How can you possibly know anything about what Captain Rogers needs.”

“That’s a low blow and you know it.”

Howard had a son. Tony. A son that looked and breathed just like him but was everything not. And Howard was _dead_.

“SHIELD has connections and resources worldwide. We have the capacity to protect Rogers and provide him a safe environment to recover in.”

And what of the rest of the Howlies? Where were they? Were they gone too?

“Well if we’re talking about the size of guns, _Stark Industries_ is a billion-dollar corporation that’s the military’s biggest supplier of weaponry-”

“You mean _was_.”

“Minor details. And besides, I’m _Iron Man_. I own the world’s only magically-powered robotic suit that can take down a tank or any one of your little flimsy paper planes and I’m more than fully capable of protecting the Capsicle over here.”

The two were full-out yelling now, and Steve closed his eyes, feeling all the stress rise back up like a tightly wound ball of string, growing tighter and tighter, fibres starting to fray.

It’s been seventy years.

Bucky’s not been dead for weeks, he’s been dead for _seventy years_.

Howard was dead.

Peggy was gone, or complicated, but it’s been seventy years and Steve could barely even imagine how old she must be now.

And now the war he just fought in – and won, apparently – was in _history textbooks?_

 “Oh, so we’re just forgetting everything that happened with HAMMER and Vanko? The mess which – might I remind you again – you needed _our_ help to fix?” Fury berated, voice harsh.

“Nobody asked you to butt in, Jack Sparrow wannabe. I was handling things just fine,” Tony shouted back.

“What happened with Vanko is proof that you are not capable of ‘handling things’!”

Steve crashed the Valkyrie into the ice. It was a fatal crash.

He was supposed to be dead.

Why was he here?

Why wasn’t he _dead?_

And something in Steve completely snapped.

“Stop,” he commanded, voice cracking at the end. “Just… _stop_.”

All the yelling and shouting around him immediately fell into a blissful silence. 

“Captain-” Fury began, back at a normal tone, but Steve wasn’t having it.

“I appreciate the offer sir,” Steve breathed out, doing his best to sound civil. “And I understand where you’re coming from.”

Fury’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“Stark isn’t who you think he is, Captain. Considering his history and propensity to make generally poor, ill-informed decisions-”

“Hey!” Tony protested.

“Perhaps you should reconsider-”

“Maybe you’re right,” Steve conceded. He knew nothing of Tony, nothing of this century really. Who was to say that he was making the right choice? “But I’d rather place my bets on somebody who didn’t lie to me the first time we met.”

Fury’s lips tightened into a thin line, and he kept Steve’s gaze for a few long seconds before sighing. He raised a gloved hand towards Steve, and Steve shook it after a second’s hesitation. 

“Well I guess your mind is made up then, Captain,” Fury replied, trying (but failing) to hide his displeasure. “But if you ever change your mind, just know that our doors are always open for you.”

And without another word, Fury turned tailed and left the room, doors sliding shut behind him as Tony watched him go with glee.

Steve breathed out, oh so grateful at the silence again before going back to his little corner in the room and crumpling back down.

 “That felt _so_ much better than expected,” Tony declared with a pleased hum. “How about some champagne?”

Steve didn’t look up from the ball he curled into, wanting nothing more than to just ignore everything and just sleep for a week straight. And not wake up. Hopefully.

“Some other time?” Pepper said. “I think Capt- _Steve_ has had a really long day.”

\----------

Steve adjusted.

It was hard.

He stopped doing double takes at the date everyday.

He read up on history.

He learnt to navigate the Internet, learnt about trains and cars, even learnt to use a basic handphone.

But one of the hardest things he had to do was to try and understand his unlikely, eccentric roommate, Tony.

Tony had actually started off civil, acting almost friendly and approachable towards Steve, but somehow after Steve actually agreed to stay at the tower, his attitude just made a complete flip, and being around him became a constant game of Russian roulette. You had no idea if you were getting the nice Tony or the mean Tony, and sometimes, Steve reckoned that Tony was just being mean on purpose.

It had started off small. A thoughtless remark here and there that Steve would frown at but dismiss, and then it quickly escalated to straight up insensitivity, like:

“Why haven’t you called that Peggy of yours anyway? Is it because she’s old and all wrinkly now?”

Or:

“So how did it feel like to go down in the ice anyway? You know, for research purposes.”

And when Steve ignored him or chose not to respond, it escalated even further.

Tony started to pull pranks on Steve, like the time when he tricked Steve into thinking the machines in the tower all had to be activated by a vocal command.

Or the time when he tried to get Steve to eat a series of questionable things, claiming it was exotic food and it was culturally insensitive if Steve didn’t at least try it.

The list went on and on.

And Steve was just so confused, because he had absolutely no idea why Tony was doing all of this.

He couldn’t think of a single thing that he’d done to offend the man, and even when Steve did his best to accommodate and appease him, Tony would still go out of his way to push and test Steve, like it was a sick game of some sort. And it was all honestly getting very hard to deal with.

Steve was already struggling enough to catch up, to stay optimistic amidst this new century, but each day with Tony just kept getting worse, grating on his nerves, wearing him down bit by bit, exposing a vulnerable nerve root in him that made Steve want to just give up and disappear.

He was beginning to understand why Director Fury tried to warn him about Tony, and Steve had half the mind to just leave and turn to SHIELD, because even if he didn’t trust them, maybe the lies they fed him would still be preferable to Tony’s endless barrage of pranks and bullying. Then he thought of Pepper, always friendly and welcoming to him, and he quickly abandoned those thoughts. She didn’t deserve that.

But everyone had a breaking point, even Steve, and that eventually came one day, a mere week into staying in the tower with Tony.

It was a bad morning to start with. He’d just woken up from another nightmare, Bucky’s scream still ringing in his ears, and Pepper just sat him down with a plate of cookies and milk, talking about mindless things when Tony suddenly sauntered in.

His hair was dishevelled and he was tossing a half-eaten apple up and down in one hand, the other hand tightly holding something small and brown and familiar.

Why did Tony have Steve’s sketchbook? One that he was pretty sure he left in his room, behind locked doors.

“Why do you have my sketchb-”

“Oh wow, who knew you were an artist? Kinda old-fashioned, but I’ll give it..6.5 stars? Have you considered digital painting?”

“Give that back.”

Tony ignored him, flipping through the book.

“It’s a person,” A flip, “Another person – wait, it’s the same person.”

“ _Tony_.”

“Who’s this anyway?” Tony asked, turning over the sketchbook to show the sketch Steve made of Bucky in his uniform. “You’ve been drawing this same guy for the past eight pages.”

Steve’s stomach lurched, heart thundering in his chest. He immediately lunged forward to snatch the book back and tightly hugged it to his chest.

“Woah!” Tony said. “You would think you’d be more chill for someone freshly defrosted from seventy years of ice.”

“That – It’s private.” Steve frowned, trying hard to smother that rush of annoyance bubbling up. “Why did you go into my room to take it?”

“Well technically it’s _my_ room, since I own the building and all,” Tony corrected, taking a bite from his apple. “Who’s that anyway?”

“It’s just Bucky.”

“Bucky? Who names their kid _Bucky?_ ”

“It’s a nickname,” Steve said through gritted teeth, trying to keep calm. Tony was just testing him, prodding and pushing. It was what he did.

“A nickname for what? An imaginary friend or something? Because I can’t fathom the thought of somebody willingly letting themselves be called _Bucky_ of all things.”

That gush of anger came lashing back twice as hot, tempered by days – or perhaps _seventy years_ \- of pent-up stress. Steve gripped his sketchbook tighter.

“Just drop it, Tony.”

“I mean… _Bucky?_ That’s like a name you give a rabbit or a hamster or something.”

“He was my best friend!” Steve unwittingly shouted.

Pepper flinched. Tony didn’t.

“Must have been some best friend, to want to be called something like ‘Bucky’,” Tony quipped, meeting Steve’s eyes as he said so.

“You just can’t help yourself, can you?” Steve growled. “You just love to get on peoples’ nerves.”

“It’s my speciality.”

Steve huffed.

“You’re a real piece of work, you know that?”

“Yupp, one of a kind,” Tony agreed with a certain nonchalance that made Steve narrow his eyes. “So…where’s this Buckaroo these days anyway? Is he dead too?”

There was the briefest pause of pure silence.

Then the milk glass in Steve’s hand completely shattered into pieces under his grip - Pepper yelped - and Steve barely registered the sharp stabbing pains at where the shards have imbedded into his skin before getting up.

Milk was spilling over the table, mixed with fresh blood from Steve and staining the carpets below, but he didn’t care.

“Yes, he’s dead. He’s fucking _dead,_ ” Steve said very quietly, just a bare whisper, but managing to sound damn near thunderous nonetheless.

Bucky used to say it was the most terrifying part of Steve, how his anger never once translated to volume. Just pure, unadulterated force of energy, steamrolling over anything and everything in its path.

Everyone fell deathly silent around him – even Tony.

“I know exactly just how dead he is falling off a train screaming because I was there and couldn’t fucking catch him. Is that what you want to hear?” Steve’s eyes grew hot again. “He was long dead before I even went into the ice and seventy years later in this fucking horrible place he’s still dead while I’m n-” Steve couldn’t say it.

He’s had more than enough.

He was _so tired_.

He ran out of the tower and didn’t look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy! :)


	3. Belonging

Steve didn’t have anything. He didn’t have any ID cards, any money or a phone. Not that he had anyone to call anyway.

All he had was his sketchbook and the black pen hooked to the edge, but he didn’t care, storming out of Stark Tower.

He’d not been out of the tower since coming back and stepping out now quickly reminded him of why.

The sound and smells were still foreign, still overwhelming. They were nothing like the pleasant drone of city life back in Steve’s time, lulling him to sleep each night. The sounds now felt more like sheer _noise_ , always there, loud and grating. Irritating.

But Steve just shook his head, soldiering on down the street in a random direction, clutching that sketchbook tightly in one arm.

He’d been trying, he really was.

He’d been trying _so hard_ , but there was nothing that could shake off that thick cloud of sorrow, or that terrible void of sheer loneliness within him.

Why did SHIELD find him? Why couldn’t he just have broken his skull and died in the ice like he was supposed to?

Why was he alive?

Steve kept walking on, keeping his head down, and by the time he passed by a small park, lined by tall trees with lush greenery, his mind had mostly settled back to a more normal, neutral state, hand already healed over into tender pink lines.

It was midday, and Steve could hear the bright laughter of children playing in the distance, such a disturbing contrast to the heaviness in his heart.

Then he spotted an empty bench down a pavement, nestled somewhere secluded under a large tree and far from all the noise.

He let out a long sigh. It’s not like he had anywhere to go.

Everything he knew was gone anyway.

Steve made his way there, sitting down and pulling out his sketchbook, trying to lose himself in the task of sketching out the scenery in front of him.

It was mindless, quick lines back and forth as he copied the trees, the grass, even the gravel on the pavement. Everything up to the smallest detail, because that was what his serum-enhanced vision could see now without even trying.

Just like his eidetic memory, replaying memories in his head accurate to every colour, sound and even smell.

And the most haunting one-

He could remember the exact chill of his fingers when Bucky fell, the pitch of his scream, the vibrations of the train, even the exact howl of the icy wind bashing into his face as he struggled to muster his magic that just couldn’t form. The way Bucky fell, desperation and fear laced in his eyes.

He could remember everything.

Steve shut his eyes, pen hanging limply in his fingers as he took a few deep breaths in and out to calm himself down.

And then he continued drawing.

He slowly lost himself in the task, and he was halfway through sketching out a cute dog with its owner as they played together in the grass when a shadow loomed over him.

“Hey there handsome.”

Steve looked up from his sketchbook to see the most gorgeous dame he’s ever seen staring straight at him.

“…Hey,” Steve greeted back cautiously, assaulted by a waft of sweet cherry perfume.

The woman had startlingly green eyes, a pale shade of emerald imposed onto an almost porcelain-white face, and as she noticed Steve staring, her luscious lips curled into a smile, coloured the same shade as the red hair lying across her face in thick waves.

“Saw you sitting all by yourself, so I thought you might like some company.” The woman raised an eyebrow in a smooth, seductive motion.

Steve’s lips tightened.

“I’m not lonely, ma’am.”

And as if Steve’s flat tone wasn’t enough to make this dame go away, she persisted, cherry perfume growing more pungent as she leaned forward.

“What are you drawing?”

Steve sighed internally, almost tempted to shut his sketchbook and leave because he was tired and he just wasn’t in the mood when-

His nose picked up the undertones of a plasticky scent from the woman, masked under that thick cherry perfume.

His instincts flared to life as he looked up again.

“…It’s nothing,” Steve replied, edge of caution creeping into his voice.

The woman took that as an invitation, crossing over into his space and peering at his sketchbook like it was the most interesting thing in the world.

And there. That plasticky, singed scent.

“Is that…” She looked over at the dog barking in the distance, bounding happily towards its owner. “Oh wow, it looks just like the real thing! You’re really good.”

Steve couldn’t help the warmth that rose up his neck at the compliment, even as his fingers at his lap clenched into a tight fist.

“Uhm…thanks.”

“What else do you draw?”

“Just buildings, animals, people.”

“Ooh. Can you draw me?” Innuendo was clear in her silky voice, as if her voice was designed to be alluring that way.

Steve glanced up, meeting the lady’s green eyes as she leaned forward yet more, thick hair draping over his hand.

There it was again, that heavy burnt plastic. An all too familiar scent. One belonging back in the chaos of the battlefield, mixed into a hot smog of acid and smoke and seeping deep into fabric, unable to dissipate no matter how many times it was washed.

It may be undetectable by ordinary people, but there was no hiding it from Steve, the dredge of magic warfare rolling off her as clear as day.

This woman was hiding something.

Was she an enemy?

Steve tensed.

The woman was still staring at him, eyes blinking curiously as she waited for his reply, and Steve exhaled softly, forcing his shoulders down and flashing a small smile. 

“Sure,” He agreed, picking up his pen and flipping his sketchbook to a new page. 

“Should I pose?”

“No, that’s okay,” Steve said, shrugging.

“Okay then.”

The lady settled into the furthest end of the bench, taking that god-awful stench with her and twisting a strand of hair around her finger, twirling it idly.

Steve started with the face, sketching out the rough shape of her face, quick fine lines across the page. The lady had beautiful features, almost in too perfect symmetry.

“So…What’s your name?”

“Steve.”

A pause.

“Just Steve?” The lady asked, batting her eyelashes.

“Yes,” Steve replied.

“Okay then, _just Steve_. I’m Natalie.”

Steve didn’t really care.

He moved on to draw her eyes. Delicate almond shaped eyes in a glassy green that seemed to change hues minutely in the sun.

“Why don’t you tell me a little about yourself?” 

Steve shrugged, moving on to draw her nose, slim and long.

“Blond male with blue eyes.”

Natalie cracked a smile, like it was the funniest thing she’s ever heard.

“I think you mean _dreamy_ blond male with blue eyes.”

Steve felt himself warm, and he resolutely kept his eyes on the sketchbook, trying to get the shape of her nose right.

“So what are you doing here all by yourself?”

“Just drawing,” Steve replied, moving on the clothes, before pausing. 

He scanned Natalie’s body briefly, careful not to let his eyes linger on anything inappropriate. Natalie had already made herself home on the bench, oozing comfort with not a single muscle bunched up in tension or drop of sweat on her face.

No signs of nervousness or any indication that she might attack whatsoever. Probably not an enemy.

Steve relaxed minutely.

“Are you single?”

Steve sighed internally.

“No.”

Why would an enemy try to chat him up anyway? And if she was truly an enemy, she could have easily taken him off guard and attacked him many times over. 

But she didn’t.

Which meant-

Steve stared at the drawing once more, and then the pen moved, sketching quick angry lines across the body that bore absolutely no resemblance to the dress she was wearing.

“Oh, so you have a girlfriend?” Natalie asked, cocking her head to the side with a sweet smile. “Or boyfriend?”

_Boyfriend?_

“No,” Steve replied. “Just not looking for a relationship.” He added the finishing touches to his drawing and set his pen down. 

“Oh, that’s a shame. Not your type?”

 “…Not really, sorry.”

He tore off the drawing and clipped his pen back.

“What is your type then?”

Steve looked up, fixed her with a cold stare, and then raised his sketch.

“Not SHIELD agents, for one.”

It was worth it, just to see Natalie’s eyes widen minutely, and Steve tossed the drawing down on the bench.

It had been a rather nice drawing, Steve admitted, before he ruined it with the atrocious-looking shirt with giant block letters of ‘SHIELD’ vehemently scribbled onto it.

“Goodbye, _Natalie,_ ” Steve said with some scorn as he got up to leave.

First Tony, now SHIELD?

Why couldn’t everyone just leave him alone?!

“Okay look…In my defence, this wasn’t my idea.”

It was like she just changed into a totally different person, different posture, different look, even different intonations to her voice. Steve clenched his fists more tightly.

“That’s no excuse. You did it anyway.”

“We’re not your enemies, Rogers. Far from that.”

“Then why do you keep treating me like one?” Steve finally snapped, so sick of everything. “I may be ignorant but I’m not stupid. Sure, it’s been been seventy years but even I know that deceit and lies are not how you treat the people you call _friends_.”

Natalie kept quiet.

Steve really has had it. He was tired of the lies. Tired of trying to fit in, trying to catch up. Tired of putting up with Tony and SHIELD and being constantly reminded of how he did not belong.

He missed the banter around a campfire, the easy company and crude jokes with Bucky and the Howlies. He missed his friends and Peggy and Howard and everyone in Brooklyn. He even missed the taste of boiled cabbage for fuck’s sake, because it was the last and only thing still familiar to Steve.

God, he just wanted to go back _home_.

But he couldn’t. Not anymore.

“If you have any decency or shred of basic respect, please don’t follow me,” Steve muttered quietly, picking up his sketchbook and leaving.

Natalie didn’t follow him.

\----------

Steve walked aimlessly down the roads, not really caring about where he was going or what he had planned. He just needed to get away from everything.

And his thoughts wandered.

To Peggy, Bucky, and then to more morbid places, like:

How many bullets would it take to stop his heart for real?

Or how much damage could his body take before it just…stopped functioning?

Steve entertained those thoughts, rolling them around in his brain, even though he knew he could never intentionally kill himself like that.

He had made a promise to Erskine to be a good man, and he was sure that ending one’s life was definitely not on the list of ‘honourable qualities’. But still, that nothingness, that void, that painless quiet…It was all starting to sound very appealing.

He continued to walk, until the skies turned dark and the people on the streets thinned out.

It was peaceful in a way, the silence, the chill in the air, and he kept walking, on and on, not knowing where the hell he was going and not caring anyway.

Until he heard the drone of familiar rocket blasts in the distance, growing louder and louder, a sniff of strange magic, and then a loud mechanical ‘clunk’ sound behind him.

Steve stopped in his tracks, not bothering to turn around.

“What do you want, Tony?”

There was a long silence, and Steve finally twisted around. Tony was there staring at him with an unreadable look on his face, encased in his robotic suit with the helmet tucked under one arm.

They stared at each other for a few seconds.

“I read about what happened,” Tony admitted. “To…Barnes. It uh…foot in my mouth moment, yeah?” 

Steve wanted to yell, to scream or destroy something, but he barely had the energy to do any of that right now. He ended up just letting out a long sigh, nodding once. That was probably as close to an apology as he could get from Tony, and he supposed that would have to do.

“…I’m sorry too,” Steve confessed, thinking back on his behaviour. “I’m sorry for losing my temper. For yelling. Overreacting. Ruining the carp-”

“Are you seriously _apologising_ right now?!” Tony snorted. “God, you’re just unbelievable.”

Steve stared at him. Seriously, what did he do wrong now?

And then it was Tony’s turn to let out a long sigh.

“Okay, you know what? It’s honesty hour time,” Tony announced.

Steve continued to stare blankly at him.

“So confession: I have spent my whole life hating you. God I have never hated anything as much as you.”

The sheer force behind that proclaim caught Steve off guard, then the words sunk in, and he looked away, suddenly feeling small.

“…Oh,” he said very quietly.

That explained a lot of things.

Tony sighed again.

“You’re not – No, I don’t _hate_ you anymore, alright? You’re…difficult to hate. Frustratingly likeable really.” 

“What..?”

“Look, I was born a null, and my dad well, he never liked that. Always said I had better chances of getting some inexplicable disease than be part of that lousy ten percent without a single ounce of magic. He couldn’t shut up about you too, talked about you all the time, how great your magic was, how smart, kind, disgustingly _perfect_ you always were. Never cared much for me, spent his whole life trying to find you instead. And I despised everything about you.”

Tony took a breath.

“But he never did find you in the end, because the car accident happened. And I always wanted to do what he couldn’t do, dig you up from the ice and prove him wrong, then punch you in your stupid face. Fast forward a bit, JARVIS called one day to say you were on the streets, that they finally, _finally_ found you, all alive and kicking ass no less, and then things happened and you stayed at the tower. You charmed Pepper, made friends with all my robots in no time flat and even put up with every single crappy thing I did - do you know how annoying that is? Having to find out that you’re _exactly_ everything that my dad used to talk about?”

There was a long silence after that, and Steve just stood there, having absolutely no idea what to say.

Just - He didn’t know. He didn’t know any of that.

But…he could understand a little of where Tony was coming from.

“…Then why did you help me in the first place?”

Tony shrugged, shaking his head.

“A mutual grudge against SHIELD? Shared dislike over top secret hush-hush spy agencies? Hey, I don’t know. Just at the time you looked like a little lost puppy on the streets and I thought it’ll be funny to steal you from right under SHIELD’s nose-”

“A puppy?”

“Yeah, like a golden retriever or someth-”

“Golden retriever?!”

“Look, it doesn’t matter alright?!” Tony threw his hands in the air. “You’re missing the main point! Point being: You annoy me, but I don’t… _hate_ you. Capisce?”

“Uhm…okay..?”

There was another long silence, before Steve spoke again.

“I know it probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but I’m sorry Tony…for what happened. I didn’t know. Truly. I thought- I thought Howard was better than that. But thank you for helping me anyway, even though you uh…don’t like me. I know I’m difficult to deal with but I can get out of your way and-”

“OH MY GOD. Stop. Just stop. Stop being so-” Tony gestured at him. “- _You_. It’s disgusting! It’s like listening to one of those ridiculous TED talks, except it goes on and on for eternity!!”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Well it’s basically everything _you!_ ” Tony groaned out loud. “Seriously, why can’t you be another despicable human being just like everyone else?”

Steve couldn’t help but crack a small smile at that, laughing a little.

“You know I did steal a bottle of milk once. And got into a million fights. Also lied on my enlistment forms. Disobeyed a bunch of orders.”

Tony gave him a look.

“Buddy, if those are what you consider as crimes, I’ve got another thing coming for you.”

“I’m just trying to say that I’m not-”

“You stubbed your toe on the table the other day,” Tony interrupted, looking entirely unimpressed. “And then you _apologised_ to the table.”

“I broke the table leg, Tony.”

“It’s a _table!_ It’s an inanimate object! Hasn’t changed since the 1940s, you dumb fossil! Do you also go around apologising to the grass for stepping on it?!”

“Uh…”

“Don’t answer that! I don’t want to know. And then you wash all the dishes. Keep the toilet seat down. Make your bed everyday. Pepper thinks you’re a freaking angel. And your room is outrageously clean, not a single speck of dust or hair in it – I know, I’ve checked!”

“But that’s just because-” Steve spluttered.

“See?! You’re so infuriating,” Tony declared loudly, but there was no heat in his voice. And then he shook his head, voice softening. “But enough of all that. Time’s up, honesty hour’s over. Now we need to go back.”

“…Back? I thought-”

“Well, Pepper’s worried and she’ll kill me if I don’t bring you back. Also, I ordered enough pizza for ten and it’s gonna go to waste if you don’t help finish it - and I know food wastage goes against your little patriotic morals there. So let’s just all go back, eat some nice pepperoni, watch some good old Disney movies and call it a night, yes?”

Steve blinked.

Tony wasn’t there when Pepper introduced him to modern pizza (now with a million variations that made Steve’s head swim). She had ordered one of each flavour for Steve to try one afternoon, but Tony definitely wasn’t anywhere nearby when Steve decided on his favourite flavour and proceeded to hog and devour all of it (much to Pepper’s amusement). 

But then Tony reached out a hand, eyes unexpectedly sincere, and Steve relaxed, smiling a little as he took the offered hand.

“Okay.”


	4. Moving On

Tony cut down on the pranks and insults. Not entirely, because Tony was still _Tony_ , but it had mellowed down to something more tolerable, and Steve was beyond grateful.  

Living with Tony became much easier, and as Steve gradually started warming up to Tony, Tony too warmed up to Steve.

Tony showed Steve movies, stocked the kitchen with tons of snacks and food for Steve to try, and he taught Steve how to use an e-reader and a laptop.

He also bought Steve clothes, after complaining one day that he was tired of seeing Steve wear the same white shirt and brown pants every single day.

Steve found parcels and parcels of clothes delivered straight to his room nearly daily after that comment, with absolutely no idea as to where they came from or how to return them.

Most of the clothes in them were obviously bought as a joke – all ridiculously lewd or impractical, but Steve would always find a few decent things buried inside every bulk purchase, and Steve would keep those, gradually expanding his pathetic wardrobe with new shirts, jackets, jeans and shoes.

Pepper helped him unbox his latest haul of parcels once, and when she demanded Steve try on a pair of dark jeans and a soft leather jacket, he acquiesced, putting them on and immediately feeling slightly uncomfortable at how the clothes fit around him.

He knew it was a 21st century thing, having clothes be tight-fitting or at least snug around the body, but Steve wasn’t used to that in the slightest, and when he walked out from the changing room with his face redder than normal, Pepper just hummed, giving him a considering look.

“It surprises me sometimes,” she said after a few seconds. 

“What does?”

“For someone who can’t cook or even remember his own social security number, Tony does know his fashion well.” Pepper smiled. “You look really nice, Steve.”

“Uhm…Thanks,” Steve mumbled, tugging on the clothes before peeking up at the mirror.

His face was still visibly red, but the clothes were soft, the colours muted and dark – just the way he liked it – and even though they were tight, they weren’t excessively restrictive in any way. Steve could still move normally in them, and yeah - Steve found his lips curling into a small smile - he supposed he did look nice. 

\----------

There were a few rules within the household.

First, that Steve’s sketchbook was private and wasn’t for anyone’s perusal, whether it was lying freely on the table or not.

Second, that keeping a steady supply of coffee was in everyone’s best interest, because Tony was excessively cranky without the caffeine, and a cranky Tony was just chaos in the making and nobody needed that.

Then third, that Steve wasn’t allowed into Tony’s lab. That was made very clear from day one, and Steve had respected that, despite his growing curiosity about the ‘Iron Man’ armour and the weird blue magic thing in Tony’s chest (that Steve never asked about).

But that all changed the day JARVIS – an artificial intelligence being, Steve eventually learnt – called him one afternoon when he was relaxing in a couch reading.

“Captain?”

Steve still jumped at the sudden voice, but he quickly regained his composure, looking up from his book.

“JARVIS?”

“My apologies for interrupting, but Sir requests your presence down at the basement.”

Steve paused, putting the book aside at the table.

“The basement? You mean the…lab?”

“Yes. Sir asks that you come promptly.”

“Uh…are you sure?”

“Yes, I can confirm that he has indeed asked for your presence down at the lab.”

Huh.

“Okay?” Steve frowned. “I’ll be right there.” 

JARVIS directed him to the lab, down the elevator, a few flights of stairs and through multiple security doors. And when he finally arrived, Steve curiously took a step into the lab, looking about.

It was surprisingly quiet – no drilling or explosions like Steve expected, just a few clinking noises here and there – and Steve walked in further, eyes widening at the sheer amount of technology and science encapsulated into this tiny space.

He passed by a table covered with strange metal contraptions, another table with bright holograms floating above it, and yet another table with weird scraps and mechanical parts, but there was still no sign of Tony. 

“Tony?” Steve called out.

A sound came from deeper into the lab.

“Oh hey Capsicle! Took you long enough. Get your American ass here now.”

Steve frowned, but obediently went forward, stepping over a fallen piece of machinery.

Tony’s hair was a mess, sticking out in weird places and with a long streak of motor oil over his fringe, but the man seemed completely uncaring of it, fiddling with some kind of machine part.

“Did you need something?” Steve asked.

Tony finally looked up from the machine, fixing Steve with an intense stare without saying anything.

“…What?”

“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering: you have magic right? Some kind of uh…matter magic?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Just curious. Anyway, I just wanted to do a little experiment, so could you just stand right there – at that white line. The zero mark.”

Steve looked at the ground marked with white tape all over and numbers written on it, then looked up into the distance, where a large piece of metal – that looked suspiciously like the chest plate of Tony’s armour suit – was screwed in place, a few feet from the ground.

He raised an eyebrow at Tony. 

“Come on. Just a little experiment.”

Steve shrugged, and walked to the white line. 

“Okay, all set. JARVIS?”

“I have already started the recording, sir.”

“Read my mind again. Well anyway, I was just thinking we could test your magic against my armour right there. So just conjure up one of those frisbees of yours and throw it as hard as you can? No holding back. Maximum strength.”

“Are you sure..?” Steve asked, recalling the time he almost murdered Tony through the armour.

“Yeah, yeah. No problemo Cap. I already upgraded my armour from the last time you wrecked it.”

“I’m really sorry about th-”

“Nope. We’ve been through that, multiple times even. I should start keeping a ‘sorry’ jar. A dollar for every apology made. I’ll be rich.”

Steve opened his mouth to protest, but Tony just pointed impatiently at the chest plate.

“Come on, we’re on a schedule here. Give it your best shot.”

Steve sighed once but summoned his shield, allowing its familiar weight to sink in at his left arm. With a breath, he drew his shield back, sharpened the rounded edge into a blade, and looked to Tony for confirmation.

“No holding back, yeah?” Tony prompted. “Your _best_ shot. Everything you have.”

Well…If Tony was so sure.

Steve poured even more power into his shield, condensing it as tightly as he could, and with a sharp exhale, he flung the shield forth, watching it slice through the air with a bright blue glow trailing behind and-

It shot straight through the armour plate and smashed into the glass wall far ahead, immediately shattering it into a million pieces with a thunderous crash.

Both Steve and Tony winced, turning to stare at each other.

“I thought you said you upgraded it?!”

“That's what l thought too!”

Then a loud shout came from upstairs.

“TONY! THAT BETTER NOT BE WHAT I _THINK_ IT IS!!”

The man in question paled.

“Oh no.”

\----------

“What do you mean it was an accident?!” Pepper shrilled, after she had stormed downstairs to drag both Tony and Steve back up, demanding an explanation as to why she needed to replace the glass panel for the fifth time this year.

“It was just an accident! I…may have underestimated how much power the big guy here has! Well in fact, it’s Cap’s fault the wall was destroyed. Literally. His glowing frisbee did it!”

“Don’t blame this on Steve! I know it was probably _your_ idea in the first place! And what the hell were you doing anyway?!”

“I was just-” Tony shrugged. “-Experimenting. I wanted to see how my armour fared against his magic, so the only logical solution was to put it to the test and- hey, at least I wasn’t actually _wearing_ the suit right? That’s a win. You can thank JARVIS for that by the way, he’s the one that told me it was probably a bad idea to wear the suit and have the good old Cap there throw a few-”

“You wanted to _what?!_ ” Pepper cut in, eyes darkening. 

Tony immediately realised his mistake and paled again.

“Oh no.”

\----------

Much to Steve’s surprise, Tony continued to let him into the lab even after that incident.

Steve was mostly there to help experiment, day after day, to test his magic against Tony’s armour, but even after the experiments were done, Tony never once chased Steve away or demanded him to leave. He let Steve wander around the lab as he pleased, touching various holograms and playing with his robots.

Steve asked him questions sometimes, when he didn’t understand things about the modern world or just out of curiosity, and even though Tony would tease him relentlessly about it, he always explained everything to Steve in the end.

But Steve never once got close to the armour suit, tried not to stare at the bright blue light in Tony’s chest either, although sometimes it just couldn’t be helped.

He was just naturally curious. He’s read many articles about the legendary ‘Iron Man’ armour and how Tony was some sort of superhero, and Steve just wanted to know more. 

How did the armour work? Why did Tony have that light in his chest? Why did it smell like weird magic? Almost like the Hydra weapons from before but not exactly either?

And then one afternoon when Tony was modifying his armour after yet another failed experiment, Steve found his eyes lingering onto Tony’s chest once more - still emanating that light and scent of weird magic, with Steve wondering for the millionth time what it was – before he looked back up, freezing slightly when Tony caught him staring. 

Tony considered Steve for a long moment, before shrugging.

“You can ask you know,” he said, looking seemingly unbothered even though Steve didn’t miss the way his shoulders tensed up.

“It’s alright. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

There was a silence, and Tony started tinkering on his armour again, resolutely not facing Steve. 

“It’s called an arc reactor. An artificial magic generator. First in the world. Renewable, limitless. The perfect union between technology and magic. My dad created the first one, everything he dreamt of. But it was big. Huge really. And I just made it smaller,” Tony explained, tapping the device on his chest once.

“Oh…” Steve said. “No wonder it smells weird.”

Tony raised an eyebrow.

“Uh…smell?”

“Yeah. I can smell magic.”

“ _Smell_ magic?”

“Yeah I can s- You know what, it’s not important.” Steve shook his head.

Howard had given him that exact same expression when Steve told him about this too (as did Peggy, Bucky, the Howlies, and basically everyone he talked to about this), and trying to explain how it all worked – how everyone’s magic had a particular scent to it, and how he could predict who and where any magic was coming from – it was like explaining to a blind person what colours were like. Basically impossible, so Steve eventually just gave up talking about it.

Tony gave him a look like he wanted to question him further, but then shrugged it off after a long second.

“Whatever. Anyway, answering the FAQs now. No, the arc reactor is not a necklace. Yes, it is a part of me. No, I cannot take it out and why, because it keeps me alive. Any other questi-”

“Keeps you alive?” Steve blurted out, taken aback.   

“Uh. Long story, but things happened. Stuff exploded. Shrapnel got stuck in my heart. The magic from the arc reactor keeps it from well…killing me.”

Steve’s eyes widened.

The news reports he read said that Tony was kidnapped for some time, but none of those articles contained any details about what actually happened. Steve wouldn’t ever ask of course, but he recognised the lifeless look in Tony’s eyes sometimes, seen only deep into the night when Steve lay awake from constant nightmares. He clearly wasn’t the only one in the household with troubled nights.

Bucky’s eyes were like that too, once, and Steve knew fully well what it took to steal away that shine from someone’s eyes, someone’s _soul_. Nothing pleasant, that is. Sometimes he wondered if his own eyes looked like that too.

“I’m sorry you went through that, Tony,” Steve said, meaning every word.

“ _Oh my god._ You really have a kink for apologies, don’t you?” Tony snorted, waving a screwdriver in Steve’s general direction. “I really need to make a ‘sorry’ jar for you. You’re awful.”

Steve chuckled.

“So you use magic normally now?”

“No, not exactly. I’m still a null, inside and out,” Tony explained. “The arc reactor is artificial magic, it doesn’t exactly function the same way biological magic does. Biological magic uses a living body as its host, so to use artificial magic-”

“You made an artificial body. The suit.”

“Yes, clever boy. I see there’s more than muscles in that ridiculous body of yours. But yeah, the suit channels the magic, and it can do things that I program it to do. Fly, shoot energy beams, track heat signatures, et cetera, et cetera, work-in-progress.”

“That’s…wow.”

“Yeah, technology has really advanced since your days.”

Indeed it has, Steve thought as he turned to peek at the suit in a corner of the room. He’d already seen some of the armour’s capabilities’ up close, not so much on the combat side, but he knew fully well how strong the armour was and how fast it could be. It was powerful, no doubt. Dangerous too, especially if placed in the wrong hands.

“So this technology is everywhere now?”

Tony stiffened slightly, pausing for a bit.

“No. It’s not. It’s just for me.” There was a hard look in Tony’s eyes as he said so, and Steve knew better than to pry further, so he dropped it.

“Oh. That’s good.” Steve nodded, before smiling slightly. “Thank you for telling me, Tony.”

Tony stared at him for a long minute.

“You know what? Scratch the ‘sorry’ jar. I’m getting a ‘thank you’ jar instead. I’ll be even richer.”

Steve laughed again.

\----------

Days passed.

Steve’s days remained simple. Drawing, reading, watching documentaries or movies and helping with Tony’s experiments at the lab.

It got better, coping with this new century, and although many things still surprised and confused him, Steve slowly found himself settling in.

He still caught himself thinking multiple times about going home, before remembering that it was impossible, and although Steve still couldn’t tell anyone proudly that he actually _liked_ this century, things were still better than before.

Steve still hated going out, hated the noise, the smells, the atmosphere, and weirdly enough, how everything was just… _everywhere_. It was crowded, prices were outrageous and why were there so many choices for just _one_ thing?!

It was insane.

Pepper kept encouraging him to go out, telling him to explore, and Steve tried, taking short walks around the tower, trying new drinks from the cafes nearby (Steve hated them all) and even visiting large department stores if he felt particularly brave that day. But he still hated it, and he never stayed for more than an hour each time.

Even Tony tried too, when Steve was cooped up in the tower for four days straight without stepping out once.

“Oh my god, I can’t take it anymore,” Tony had said, throwing a wrench on the table as he turned to stare at Steve in the lab one day.

“What did I do now?”

“You’re just- You’re _moping_. It’s annoying and I can’t stand it anymore. You’re like some kind of depressing puppy,” Tony declared.

Steve frowned.

“I’m not moping. And I’m not a puppy.”

“Yes you _are_. Now get out of here. I don’t want to see you back here until you’ve gotten a good dose of daily sunshine out in the wild. You don’t get out enough.”

“I don’t see you getting this dose of daily sunshine.” Steve frowned again, gesturing to the lab that Tony practically lived in.

“Well that’s because I’m not moping! But you are. You’re supposed to be sunshine personified, but now you’re just this sad infectious gloomy storm cloud. So shoo, get out of here! Go get some good sunshine on that patriotic ass of yours. I don’t want to see you back here until sunset.”

“I don’t need sunshine. I’m not a plant,” Steve continued to mumble in protest, but begrudgingly got up anyway.

“Out!!”

Steve went out.

\----------

Steve decided to go back to the park he was at before, bringing his sketchbook and pencils along, because if he was going to be stuck outside for a few hours, he might as well be doing something he actually enjoyed.

Steve sat in the same bench as before, pencil drawing quick lines across the page as he sketched out the landscape before him. He quickly immersed himself in the task, adding details to the trees and drawing out a pair of plump pigeons sunbathing at the fountain.

He was halfway through sketching out the clouds in the sky when a shadow loomed over him, and Steve looked up to meet a pair of green eyes, staring curiously back at him. It was the SHIELD agent – Natalie, or whatever her name was. She still smelled heavily of magic, but the nauseating cherry perfume was thankfully gone.

“Hey,” She greeted.

“Hey,” Steve returned back.

There was silence, and Steve shut his sketchbook, waiting.

Then Natalie let out an exaggerated sigh.

“Okay, fine. Stop giving that look. I’m sorry about what I did there so can we start over?”

Steve looked up at her, considering, before smiling a little and nodding.

“I’m Steve.” He raised his hand for a handshake. “Can I get a real name this time?” 

“I don’t have ‘real’ names in my business - but it’s Natasha. Natasha Romanoff. I’m a SHIELD agent.” She shook his hand.

“It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

“Call me Natasha.”

“Right…uh…Natasha.”

“So what’s up with you? Not hanging out with your best friend Tony Stark today?”

“He said I needed to get some _sunshine_.”

“Sunshine?” Romanoff raised an eyebrow, and Steve just shrugged at her.

“Is SHIELD tracking me or something?”

It was Romanoff’s turn to shrug, which Steve supposed more than answered the question.

“Fury didn’t think you’d last this long with Stark. Part of the reason why he so readily allowed you to stay with him,” Romanoff said.

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“Well it’s not all bad, really.”

“Why are you here anyway?”

“Can’t I just be checking up on you, Rogers?”

“Not if you clearly want something.”

Romanoff met Steve’s gaze and held it there, like she was searching for something. Then,

“Fury asked me to speak with you. For a possible recruitment.”

“You want to recruit me? I spent seventy years in the ice. Pretty sure I would be terribly outdated.”

“You’re the only successful super soldier known to mankind, and a powerful mage no less – even though your use of said magic is rather… _unorthodox_.”

“Unorthodox?”

“You have matter magic that can nullify and reflect any kind of magical or physical force in the world; you could basically do any number of things with it. A knife, a gun, any kind of weapon, and you’d be unstoppable. And yet you chose…a _shield_.”

“It’s supposed to be symbolic,” Steve argued.

“And that’s why I said unorthodox.”

Steve said nothing.

“Anyway, I don’t suppose I can interest you with a tour around SHIELD’s headquarters? No strings attached?”

Steve blinked.

“Where is that anyway?”

“It’s classified, but if you agree to join us, we’ll let you in on the secret.” Romanoff winked once.

Steve gave her a look, and Romanoff smirked.

“Come on, it’ll only be for a few hours. And I’ve already called for transport so you might as well just come along.”

“I didn’t even agree yet.”

“Well you didn’t outright disagree, so that means you _are_ considering it. And if you are, and haven’t walked away yet, chances are you’ll say yes. Am I right?”

Steve blinked again, suddenly very aware of Romanoff’s gaze, as sharp and piercing as a viper.

“…Fine,” he finally said, looking aside. He was rather curious of SHIELD anyway. “Just for a few hours.”

Steve kind of resented the way Romanoff smirked at him, clearly victorious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi again! Thanks for reading once again and hope you enjoy :)


	5. A Tour

SHIELD headquarters was a massive building, and Romanoff brought him about the different levels as promised, explaining things to him as they went along. Training rooms, briefing rooms, control rooms, so many rooms, all with different purposes.

The one that interested Steve the most was of course, the training area, fitted with fighting rings, obstacle courses, even multiple shooting ranges.

“You know,” Romanoff said, gesturing to the group of SHIELD agents at the shooting range. “One of the first things Agent Carter pushed for after creating SHIELD was to abolish the use of ‘purple pins’. It used to be standard issue back in your day, right? To mark the so-called magic elite?”

Steve looked to Romanoff in surprise, then nodded.

“Nobody uses them now?”

“Not at all. Not even in the military. Agent Carter was a strong advocate against magic discrimination throughout the years. Without her, a lot of people – SHIELD or not - would probably have been jobless. Homeless. She really fought for the people,” Romanoff explained, then pointed at Steve, “and she did all that in honour of _you_  Rogers.”  

“…Oh.” Was all Steve could say in response, before swallowing hard.  

That was incredible.

Peggy was incredible.

He always knew she would have been amazing in whatever she set her mind to do, and he was undeniably so proud of her, of what she’d done, but…

Steve missed it all.

He had been lost, declared dead, all while Peggy and everyone else moved on and made their mark on the world.

And he couldn’t even be there to watch them shine, let alone celebrate their success. 

He was just… _gone_.

Romanoff must have sensed a change in Steve’s mood, and she quickly grabbed his attention again with a soft tap on his shoulder.

The SHIELD agents in the range were now all wearing earmuffs, equipped with guns of various sizes. Getting ready to fire on command.

Steve exhaled out once, took the pair of earmuffs Romanoff offered him, then finally returned his focus back to the SHIELD agents.

Their shooting was certainly impressive, and after the shooting practice concluded, Romanoff took him to the next area: an obstacle course.

Once again, the SHIELD agents all breezed through the course, performing vaults and rolls with incredible ease.

It was nothing particularly spectacular or eye-catching, and it wasn’t until Steve got to visiting one the fighting rings that things finally got a little more interesting.

There were two agents currently sparring, jumping across the ring in quick steps and huffs.

The smell of magic exchanged back and forth was fully soaked into the air, almost pungent to Steve’s nose. So it was truly strange, because-

“Why aren’t the eyes glowing?” Steve asked.

“Magic-cloaking contact lenses.”

“Contact lenses?”

“They’re like…” And Romanoff paused, thinking. “They’re like…sunglasses I guess, but placed directly on the eye.”

“Placed on the eye? Doesn’t that hur - Is that normal now?!”

Romanoff flashed an amused look at Steve’s horrified expression. 

“Yes. People use them in place of glasses. They’re pretty small lenses, not as thick or as hard as normal glasses, and they’re actually rather comfortable. But magic-cloaking ones are a SHIELD-only special. Can’t have the enemy predicting when you’re going to use magic.” Romanoff winked.

“O-kay?” Steve said, dragging out his response, still trying to process the very idea of putting glasses on top of the eyeball itself. That did _not_ sound pleasant at all. Romanoff smirked, still amused.

Then Steve returned his attention to the sparring match between two female agents, one blonde and one with short black hair.

Martial arts and combat styles have definitely evolved from Steve’s time, and as the two agents continued to trade blows, he quickly became mesmerised, taking in all the moves, posture, balance, transference of momentum, even angles, his fingers itching to try out some of those moves himself.

“Who do you think will win?” Romanoff suddenly asked. “Those two have been going at it for a while now.”

Steve blinked once. Zoomed out from detailing the agents’ moves and started analysing the fight more broadly.

The blonde agent had some kind of fire magic, arms drenched in flames and throwing out punches and kicks in a flurry of red. Definitely a more aggressive kind of magic. One that would have definitely earned her the purple pin back in Steve’s time.

The black haired agent on the other hand didn’t seem to have any visible magic, although Steve could still smell traces of it pulsating out in short intervals. It had a deep, almost rubbery quality to it, similar to what Dum Dum’s magic smelled like. So probably an enhancement-type magic then, to alter the body (Dum Dum could enhance his stamina, to the point where it almost surpassed Steve’s).

At first glance, the blonde probably looked like the clear victor, being more striking of the two with her bright fire-powered slashes as opposed to the black-haired agent’s colourless blows. But really, the black-haired agent only _looked_ harmless. As far as Steve could tell, she was releasing a similar intensity of magic as the blonde, being entirely capable of countering the magic-powered blows despite being less flashy.

And in fact, the blonde was actually the one playing it safe in the fighting match, with the other being far more aggressive of the two. A little too reckless for Steve’s taste, but the ferocity of which she was delivering her blows with was succeeding in forcing the blonde back, bit by bit.

“Probably the black-haired agent,” Steve finally answered.

“Care to explain your choice, Rogers? Or are you just supporting the underdog?” Romanoff teased.

“No, she just seems more likely to win. She’s stronger, faster, and whatever enhancement magic she has is fully countering the blonde’s fire.”

“How do you know she’s even using magic? Or the type of magic?” Romanoff asked, gaze suddenly razor-sharp again.

Steve held Romanoff’s gaze for a couple blinks, and then shrugged.

“Lucky guess,” he replied.

Romanoff continued staring at Steve for a few seconds, but she let his obvious lie slide and turned her attention back to the two agents who have finally completed their spar.

As Steve predicted, the black-haired one won. 

\----------

People kept staring at Steve.

They weren’t even trying to be discrete about it, eyes widening and doing double-takes when they saw Steve walking around SHIELD with Romanoff. He tried his best to ignore all the looks, but he still found himself tensing up every time somebody gave him _the look_. 

It was one of the more shocking things Steve learnt in this century: that he went down in history as a national hero, revered and admired by all.

There were children comics based on his adventures too, where he took the moniker of Captain America and wore a ridiculous red, blue and white outfit (Tony had a ball laughing at the way Steve went completely red upon reading some of it).

Steve didn’t outright _hate_ it by any means. It was a huge honour being deemed a good role model and inspiring people, and if his experiences could teach people to do good, he was all for it, except-

Well.

This was all getting a bit… _much_.

Thankfully, Romanoff was quick to notice his discomfort, and after a full three hours of having people stare at him like he was some kind of strange animal in a zoo exhibit, she dragged him off to a security door – one that she had to swipe a card to get through – and gestured for him to go in.

Steve went in, blinking as he entered into a lounge of some kind, fitted with couches, a well-stocked pantry and multiple beanbags.  

“No one should bother us here,” Romanoff said. “Only agents with certain clearance can come in.”

“…Thanks.”

Romanoff smiled, then hopped over to the pantry, pulling out a bowl and a huge box of something called ‘Lucky Charms’.

She poured out a fair portion, and Steve stared dubiously at it, frowning.

“Not a fan of Lucky Charms?”

“They’re so…colourful.”

“Want to try some?” Romanoff asked, passing over the bowl.

Steve continued to stare suspiciously at the cereal, but eventually picked up one of the least offensive-looking pieces to pop in his mouth.  

Expecting it to taste of chemicals or whatever they used to turn the cereal to such a vividly bright colour, Steve was pleasantly surprised to find that it tasted…normal.

It was sweet, sure, but it wasn’t repulsive in any way.

“Huh.”

“Not so bad, right?” Romanoff smirked.

“…I guess not,” Steve replied, reaching out to steal another marshmallow piece from Romanoff’s bowl.

Then another.

She smirked again.

\----------

Romanoff was true to her word at least, and by the time the sun fully set, Steve was dropped off outside Stark Tower with a thick stack of files and Romanoff’s phone number written on a post-it.

Tony was waiting for him when he reached his floor, and he immediately walked up to Steve upon seeing him, sulking.  

“What the hell, Cap! I said go out and get sunshine, not engage with the enemy and enter their secret lair!!”

“It was just a visit.”

“And what’s with all these files?! Has SHIELD not heard of going paperless? So terrible for the environment.”

“I don’t know, Agent Romanoff gave them to me and I haven’t-”

“You met _Romanoff?_ ” Tony’s eyes narrowed. “You can’t trust that woman.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Steve defended, putting the files down on the table and opening the first one.

Steve’s heart immediately did a flip when he saw Peggy’s name printed at the very top, with a photograph of her underneath that, still as pristine and beautiful as Steve remembered.

Suddenly the file seemed so heavy, even for his enhanced strength, and a hard lump formed at Steve’s throat.

He closed the file back.

“Not going to read it?” Tony wasn’t teasing or mocking this time, simply curious.

Steve swallowed.

“…I don’t know,” he admitted.

Tony fixed him with an expressionless look, and a long, awkward silence followed. Steve was just about to change the subject and ask Tony something – _anything_ really - when the man suddenly whipped out his phone, tapping rapidly.

“So anyway, dinner. Pep’s in France now and it’s my chance to eat whatever I want without her nagging about my cholesterol levels or whatever. And I have a sudden deep craving for pizza, stuffed crust and gooey cheese. Tons of pepperoni. So how about that?”

Steve looked back up at Tony, blinked once, and then smiled.

“Sounds good.”

\----------

When Steve finally mustered enough courage to read the files, he refused to leave his room for a full three days.

And on the fourth day, Director Fury himself came to the tower at night, speaking of something called the Avengers Initiative.

Hydra’s secret weapon, or the Tesseract, or the root cause of every fucking bit of grief in Steve’s life, had fallen into the wrong hands _again._

They really should have left that damn thing in the ocean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter than normal, but I hope you enjoy reading it nonetheless! :) Thanks for all the support!!


	6. First Contact

Steve met up with Romanoff again after one of the most awkward plane flights with SHIELD agent Phil Coulson, a certified fanboy (as termed by Tony), and she’d smirked upon seeing him, casting a backward glance at Coulson.

“Thought he was gonna swoon,” Romanoff said, urging Steve to follow her. “Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?”

“Trading cards??”

God this century would never cease to surprise him. First comic books, now trading cards?

“They’re vintage. He’s very proud.”

Steve just gave her a look, which only further amused Romanoff.

“Come on, lighten up. I’ll show you where I smuggled in the Lucky Charms later. Just promise you’ll leave some for me.”

Steve didn’t smile at that, but it was a near thing.

Then he spotted a man near one of the docked planes, shuffling about and looking distinctly out of place amongst the black-cladded SHIELD agents running about.

He had a familiar silhouette, an even more familiar nest of curly hair on his head, then the man turned around, and it finally clicked.

“Dr Banner,” Steve called, raising a hand for a handshake.

The man in question jerked at the sound of his own name, eyes widening as he finally noticed Steve. Banner looked Steve over, eyebrows furrowing, before finally shaking his hand.

“Yeah, hi. They told me you would be coming.”

“Word is you can find the cube.”

“…Is that the only word on me?”

Steve didn’t miss the hard tone in Banner’s voice, or the way his shoulders tensed up, eyes flickering aside before resting back on Steve’s.

Eyes of a soft brown – not a bright rageful green – but still an exact clone of a particular giant green monster that Steve watched tear planes and tanks apart like they were made of paper just minutes ago back on the plane.

A scientific experiment gone wrong, and where the gentle doctor used to be able to morph the size of his hands as he pleased, now the mere trigger of magic caused him to transform into a huge, indestructible monster.

Steve carefully softened his voice, looking straight into Banner’s eyes.

“Only word I care about.”

Banner studied him for a few long seconds, waiting, before his shoulders relaxed, eyes finally losing that defensive sheen as he smiled up at Steve – the first genuine smile.

“It must be strange for you, all of this,” he said, gesturing around him.

Agents jogging about, commands and orders being barked out in the distance, planes and weaponry littered over the entire space. Seemingly familiar but completely different. Too noisy. Metallic. Dark. _Foreign_.

Steve’s heart throbbed once, but he mustered a smile nonetheless.

“Well, this is actually kind of familiar.”

Neither Romanoff or Banner called him out on his lie.

\----------

Nothing, not the Iron Man armour or any of Tony’s crazy technologies could remotely prepare Steve for the massive Helicarrier actually taking off into the sky and staying there (Even Tony would have probably been amazed - if he wasn’t still stuck in his tower making some last minute modifications to his armour).

Even the interior was just as impressive as the exterior. Screens and technology everywhere, agents with headsets communicating seamlessly with each other. SHIELD definitely had massive resources, and with the Tesseract at stake, Steve wouldn’t have expected anything less.

Director Fury stood in the middle of it all, looking just as imposing as somebody of his rank would be, while Banner and Romanoff had left for a lab of some sort, leaving Steve alone in the enormous control room, roaming about and taking care not to touch anything.

“Impressive huh?” Director Fury asked casually.

Overwhelming, more like, but Steve didn’t say that.

“A little,” Steve said instead, staring hard at a screen that had a man’s face on it. Somebody called Clint Barton. Who’s that? He’d seen Romanoff looking at it just now. Did she know him?

Steve’s eyes flickered to another screen, this one had a picture of the Tesseract on it, and the man who had stolen it: Loki.

He looked just like another incarnation of the Red Skull, complete with the same cold gaze and sneer on his face.

“Anyway, I trust you received the files I told Agent Romanoff to hand you?” 

Steve’s jaw clenched at that, but he nodded. The files, right. Files on the Howlies, Howard, Peggy, all the people that Steve had still been joking and laughing with just two months ago, now gone. Dead. They all lived full lives without him, passing away peacefully without ever knowing Steve was still alive, and although Peggy was still here, alive, she was now confined to a bed in a hospital somewhere, with her mind gradually fading away as she lived out the last remaining years of her life in peace. She had married, had kids, _grandkids_ even, and what about Steve? Steve had nothing. No family, no home, no _Bucky_ , just abandoned all by himself in this century. 

Something must have shown in his face, and Director Fury left his station, strolling over.

“There’s a place for you here, still. The world could use a man like you, Cap, and that starts with finding the Tesseract, stopping this madman from unleashing chaos in the world.”

Unexpectedly heartfelt, Steve met Director Fury’s gaze, nodding once without saying anything. Then Director Fury’s voice hardened again.

“We’ll let you know if we get any new intel, Captain.”

Steve inclined his head yet again, and Director Fury went back to his station, muttering out orders once more.

\----------

Loki was finally found hours later, and Steve was boarding a plane with Romanoff heading to – of all places - _Germany_.

SHIELD had a uniform made for Steve, supposedly designed by Agent Coulson and inspired by those ridiculous Captain America comics, and Romanoff had thrown Steve her signature smirk upon seeing it, decidedly not saying a word because absolutely no words needed to be said at how ludicrous this clown costume was.

A few more minutes of silence, and Romanoff finally spoke.

“So did you actually wear-”

“ _No_.”

Romanoff wasn’t facing him, but Steve could practically imagine her amused look, and he sighed out loud, tugging hard at the uniform.

This was the absolute worst.

Sure, it may be bulletproof and magic-resistant, but the colour…Oh god the colour had to be the brightest shade of red and blue in existence – even brighter with Steve’s enhanced vision - and it was just plain horrible.

“Anyway, we’re about five minutes away,” Romanoff reported, before tapping a button, making another screen pop up, playing a live feed video of what was happening down there. “And you might want to see what the madman is up to at the moment.”

Steve narrowed his eyes at the screen. Loki was dressed like some kind of character from a play, wearing a helmet with long, curved horns with a glowing sceptre in one hand, screaming grandiose and flamboyance all in one, towering over a group of innocent bystanders as he made a melodramatic speech about the nature of humanity.

The last time Steve heard somebody make a speech like that, the world was at war, so many lives lost fighting for justice and freedom because a rotten dictator decided to assert his corrupt beliefs on the world.

Loki continued speaking, waving his sceptre and strolling through the kneeling masses when suddenly, an old man stood up, boldly confronting Loki.

Oh no, this was bad.

Loki simply seemed amused at whatever the man said, twirling his sceptre once before pointing it towards the man, and Steve didn’t need to see the glint in his eye before he was dashing to the plane’s door, smashing the ‘open’ button. The doors slid open, and Steve was instantly assaulted by a powerful blast of wind, forcing him to take a step back.

“Rogers we’re still in the air!!” Romanoff yelled.

“No time!” Steve shouted back over the howling of the wind. He swiftly summoned his shield, bright blue by his side, then immediately leapt out of the speeding plane.

He wasn’t going to let another person die on his watch. Not again. Never.

\----------

Steve probably, maybe, didn’t really think this through before he threw himself off the plane, but there was no time for regrets.

Plummeting through the air and mere split seconds from hitting the ground, Steve concentrated his magic at his soles and strengthened his shield, gritting his teeth hard preparing for the inevitable crash.

The ground drew closer as a huge blur, Loki and the man becoming bigger and clearer, and Steve saw the barest flare of blue shooting out from Loki’s staff before he struck the ground, hard. Pain shot past his barriers and crackled up his legs and knees like a fiery lightning bolt, and Steve thrust his arm up through the searing pain, shield raised to block Loki’s blow.

Steve nearly forgot how unpleasant it felt to release a firestorm of magic all at once, but the boiling gush of feverish heat and pain quickly reacquainted him to the sensation, and he bit down even harder, groaning past the agony.

Loki’s blow was deflected back at him, and the man was knocked over, stink of magic sizzling in the air.

Steve stood back up, ignoring the aching protest by his legs. People were staring wide-eyed at him, some gasping, and Steve stepped forth, gathering more magic to thicken his shield back to normal as he neared Loki.

“You know,” Steve began. “The last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everyone else, we ended up disagreeing.” 

Loki looked even more ridiculous up close, soaked in an otherworldly scent that definitely had no resemblance to anything from earth.

“The soldier,” Loki sneered. “The man out of time.”

That stung, just the faintest bit, before Steve steeled himself again.

“I’m not the one who’s out of time,” Steve declared, hearing the roar of engines coming in from above as Romanoff piloted the plane in. Just in time, actually.

“Loki, drop the weapon and stand down.”

Steve saw Loki consider it for the briefest moment, then shot out another blast of magic. It smelled of void and death, similar to those Hydra weapons, and Steve flung his shield out. It struck Loki’s chest square on, but the man barely budged, staring hard at Steve before lashing out with his sceptre.

He was fast, powerful too, definitely levels stronger than Steve, and they traded a few harsh blows, before Steve was swiftly knocked back with a brutal blow to the stomach, flipping over a few times and toppling to the ground.

Steve jumped back up on his feet, tossing another shield Loki’s way. He dodged it easily, and they started brawling again. Steve’s punches and kicks met the solid metal of Loki’s sceptre each time, and with a vicious swing, the sceptre slammed into Steve’s back, throwing him off balance and smashing into the floor again.

God this man definitely packed a wallop.

Steve panted once from the exertion, about to pop back up on his feet when Loki pressed the end of the sceptre against Steve’s head, forcing him back down.

“Kneel,” Loki commanded.

A fire flared to life inside Steve, and he kicked back out, hissing,

“Not today!”

Loki was smacked to the side, but he regained his balance within seconds. Steve lunged for him with a punch ready, and Loki easily twirled aside, grabbing a fistful of Steve’s uniform and tossing him back to the ground effortlessly.

Steve grunted once as he came in contact with the ground yet again, and he rolled back up, preparing another shield to throw at Loki when-

The most obnoxious (and horridly familiar) rock music blared to life, followed by the screeching of rocket engines in the distance.

Tony in his Iron Man armour came blasting in with a trail of blue and ember, sending an explosive blow of magic barrelling straight for Loki and then landing on the ground with a crash, air and ground rumbling at the sheer force of impact. 

“Make your move, Reindeer Games,” Tony demanded, revealing a huge arsenal of missiles and rockets hidden in his armour with a hiss.

Woah, Tony really installed a lot of firepower in there. Not that Steve was complaining.

He jumped back on his feet and jogged towards Tony, shield still bright and thick at his side.  

Loki seemed to actually consider Tony this time. Then a scent of the strangest combination of frost and flame filled the air, and Loki’s outfit suddenly faded away, helmet and armour vanishing into thin air.

Steve narrowed his eyes at that. Some kind of illusionary magic? It certainly didn’t smell normal. Not to mention Loki’s eyes didn’t glow at all when he used magic, and Steve doubted he was using one of those SHIELD contact lenses either.

Loki raised his hands in surrender, and Tony retracted his missiles, lowering his arms.

“Good move.”

Steve didn’t dematerialise his shield, still prepped at his side just in case, and he tilted his head towards Tony.

“Hey Tony.”

“Hey Cap.”

A short pause.

“Can I just say you look very dashi-”

“ _Not a word_.”

Tony sniggered.

“I’m totally sending Pepper a picture of this. Can’t deprive her of such brilliant displays of patriotism.”

\----------

“I don’t like it,” Steve admitted later on the plane, on the way back to the Helicarrier with Loki in handcuffs.

“What, Rock of Ages giving up so easily?”

“I don’t remember it being that easy. This guy packs a wallop.”

Tony cast him a look, shrugging.

“Still, didn’t expect you to rock all those fancy moves. Pretty spry for an older fellow.”

Steve sighed.

“Tony, be serious.”

“I _am_ being serious. You’re like what, a hundred? Practically ancient.”

Steve squashed away that smidgen of exasperation that came, sighing once more before staring hard at Loki.

Steve had already sustained a couple of bruises and abrasions from his short fight with Loki, while the man himself remained completely unharmed, not a single speck of dirt anywhere.

It was definitely suspicious. Loki packed a punch, being much stronger and faster than even Steve. So why did he give up so easily? What was he up to?

And just as he thought that, the entire aircraft lit up in white as a blazing arc of pure lightning erupted down from the sky, a sky which had been clear just a minute ago.

Everyone on the plane jumped, save Loki.

Immediately following that, a deep rumble boomed in the air, crackling through Steve’s bones and peaking into a deafening roar that split the sky into two, shockwaves reverberating through the entire aircraft.

“Where’s this coming from?” Romanoff demanded, just as another blinding bolt of lightning exploded down, bright ribbons snaking down the sky and vanishing.

The plane trembled once more, and Loki suddenly looked up, eyebrows raising.

“What’s the matter? Scared of a little lightning?”

“I’m not overly fond of what follows.”

What’s that supposed to mean? Steve exchanged a look with Tony, who seemed equally bewildered for once.

Almost on cue, something hard crashed down onto the roof, rattling the already unstable plane. Steve conjured his shield, while Tony reached out for his helmet, sliding it back on.

“We should wait a-” Steve started.

Tony ignored him, stepping over to the plane door and punching a button to open the doors.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Steve demanded, shielding his eyes as a relentless burst of wind slammed in.

A massive man with silver armour and fluttering blond hair dropped down, holding a large strange hammer. His eyes darted to Tony, then Steve, and finally, narrowing on Loki.

Oh no.

He started storming in, eyebrows furrowed, and Tony raised an arm, palm glowing blue in warning.

The man simply lobbed the hammer at Tony, deceptively small, but completely knocking Tony off balance and sending him skidding across the ground.

Steve let loose his shield in a flying arc, and the man swatted it aside, going straight for Loki.

“Stop!”

The man paid Steve no attention. The odd hammer was suddenly back in the man’s grip, even though Steve didn’t even see him picking it back up. The man pulled Loki up, eyebrows furrowing as he dragged him back out of the plane.  And with a tall leap straight out into the air, he easily escaped with Loki, plummeting away into the dark.

Steve huffed at that, just as Tony got back up. 

“Ugh. And now there’s _that_ guy.”

“Is he a friendly?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Tony retorted. “If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract’s lost.”

Tony started marching to the exit, magic flaring, and Steve reached out, urging,

“Tony, we need to plan our attack.”

“I have a plan.” Tony briefly looked back. “ _Attack_.” And with that, he just blasted out of the plane, disappearing after the hammer-wielding man.

Ugh.

Steve conjured another shield and peered out, shouting over the wind.

“How far up are we?”

“Too far up!” Came Romanoff’s reply, but Steve was already backpedalling away, then charging out against the wind and jumping off the plane for the second time in a day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parachutes do not exist in Steve Rogers' dictionary. 
> 
> Sorry for the late update. Things got crazy but hopefully I can get back to the weekly update schedule as per usual! :P 
> 
> Thanks for reading!! <3


	7. The Spark

The entire forest stunk of heavy magic use.

Explosions and crashes from a fight breaking out could be heard deeper within the forest, and Steve cursed out loud.

They could have talked this through, came up with a proper strategy, perhaps even avoided combat altogether, because if this guy was truly a friendly, he could have been reasoned with instead of resorting to violence.

But no, Tony had to jump straight into a full-blown fight, guns out, magic flaring, with absolutely no care about the consequences and now it was up to Steve to stop things from escalating even further.

Steve allowed himself a full second to compose himself, then he picked up pace again, grunting past the stabbing pains through his knees and ankles and vaulting across a splintered tree, running deeper into the thick smog of magic energy.

It took a few minutes of sprinting before he finally reached Tony and the man, where the two were going all out on each other, hitting and striking each other over and over in a relentless cycle.

Tony’s armour was battered with mud, cracked in some areas, while the other man seemed completely unscathed, shiny hammer in hand and not a strand of hair out of place.

Tony’s palms started glowing, and the other man responded in fashion, spinning his hammer once and charging up his own magic. Just like Loki, his eyes didn’t glow, and although his magic did smell otherworldly as well, it had a more…burnt flavour to it, like charcoal. 

Steve drew up his magic into a shield, took but a split second to calculate the angle and force before tossing it out, striking the man’s hammer before ricocheting to hit Tony’s raised palm.

“That’s _enough!_ ” He ordered, when both men turned to look at him. Tony lowered his arms. The other man didn’t.

“Now, I don’t know what you plan on doing here,” Steve stated.

“I’ve come here to put an end to Loki’s schemes,” the man said, voice heavily accented.

“Then prove it,” Steve said. “Put that hammer down.”

Tony winced, raising a hand.

“Uh yeah, about that, total bad call. This dude loves his hamme-”

A single brutal swing knocked Tony aside.

“You want me to put the hammer _down?!_ ” The man roared, a massive spike of magic pulsing out as he did so, gathering at his hammer which immediately started sparking with white arcs of lightning. He leapt into the air with a cry, jumping higher and further than any normal human (and Steve).

God, this was exactly why Steve wanted to avoid violence altogether.

With his breath caught midway in his throat, Steve planted himself in the ground, firmly raising his shield up. The rest of his magic was immediately unleashed in a flurry of blue, and he promptly ignored the way all his muscles seized up in protest, focusing all his energy into hardening his shield and bracing for impact.

The bright hammer came down in a white flash, and Steve felt the exact moment when the opposing energies finally collided.

For the barest second, everything was wiped away. No impact, no colour, no sound or even smell. Just complete void.  

Then all the energy exploded out in a devastating scream, instantly shattering Steve’s shield into dust and slapping him aside like a ragdoll. He crashed through the earth, drew up thick streams of dirt into the air, had his world turned upside down more times in a single second than what he thought was humanly possible, then was promptly slammed back to the ground, the world finally becoming upright and motionless again.

There was a brief moment of blissful quiet, until the pain crashed down with all the wrath of a tidal wave, sweeping aside all thought and drowning his body in pure agony.

Ah _fuck_.

Steve drew blood biting so hard on his cheek attempting to stifle any sound of pain. He couldn’t even begin to register where was hurting or what was broken. Every cell in him felt like it had been shredded apart. A metallic taste soaked onto his tongue, and he blinked furiously, stumbling back on his feet despite every part of his body wanting to melt away.

The air was still vibrating with residual magic, blistering hot on Steve’s skin in the wake of all that carnage, and he took a quick glance around, finally taking in the full extent of the damage wrought.

Smoke and dust sinking down as a dense cloud. The ground lightly singed, hot to the touch. All nearby plant-life disintegrated beyond recognition. Even the massive trees that have once stood tall in the forest for centuries were now knocked over like a stack of simple dominoes, flattened to the ground all shrivelled and black. The luscious forest turned into a wasteland in but a mere second.

And the three of them – now all standing again - exchanged glances with each other, heaving.

“Are we done here?” Steve asked between pants.

 ----------

They made it back to the Helicarrier with no further disturbances, but even with Loki finally secured into a cell, chilling speech made, the Tesseract was still missing and they were nowhere closer to locating it than before. They were still back at square one.

And as if the universe hadn’t thrown Steve enough curveballs in the past two months or so, here was another one: a potential alien army on its way to invade earth, an army from _outer space._

If only Bucky was here to see this. He always loved space, loved the unknown, and the thought of another sentient lifeform out there had always excited him. Maybe not so much the thought of a hostile army hellbent on destroying earth, but the thought of a separate actual lifeform apart from humanity. Steve distinctly remembered laughing when Bucky ranted non-stop about it, and when Steve asked him exactly why Bucky liked space so much, he just gave him a look, then smirked with a bright glint in his eyes.

“Well, ‘cause if I’m gonna find another species in the universe just as stupid and dumb as you, it’s probably out there in outer space.”

He could almost hear Bucky say it, in the exact tone with that particular musical lilt to his voice, and Steve’s eyes immediately turned hot, a hard lump forming and clamping down his throat.

No.

There was a time and place for those damnable thoughts, and right now, his primary goal should be finding the Tesseract.

Steve made himself breathe in and out a few times, release it all, then back to figuring out what Loki’s plans were. How to stop him.

Learning more about the sceptre was definitely a good place to start, but that seemed best left to the only two people who actually have some level of expertise in magic and science: Dr Banner and…Tony.

Steve couldn’t help the way he immediately frowned just thinking about him.

What happened back there with Thor and Loki was just-

Steve sighed soundlessly.

Jumping into things without a plan. Being reckless. Not even bothering to communicate anything to anyone.

They needed to work together to take down Loki, and everything that happened since Loki was captured had been the furthest example of teamwork Steve ever experienced since his days back in army training with Hodge and the rest of the men.

Tony was utterly terrible at being a team player- though in all honesty, Steve didn’t expect anything less. Tony had always been the eccentric kind, horrible enough at building and sustaining meaningful social relationships, let alone actually _cooperating_ with somebody, and while Steve had learnt to accept Tony’s many weird intricacies over time, he simply didn’t have the time to deal with all that right now.

An alien invasion was imminent. If they couldn’t even do the simplest thing of coming together to work as a team, innocent people would pay the price. Now that was unacceptable.   

But that could wait for later. Right now, there was another matter at hand that demanded attention, that being:

“Loki got himself captured for a reason,” Steve said, finally breaking the long silence at the table.

Romanoff and Thor were seated opposite him, the redhead clutching a box of Lucky Charms and idly picking out handfuls to pop into her mouth while Thor watched, giving the most befuddled look when Romanoff pointedly picked out the most colourful-looking marshmallow piece to eat.

Both turned to look at him questioningly. 

“Loki has some sort of…illusionary magic. He could have used it at any point in time to escape, but he didn’t,” Steve elaborated. 

“He had to have known he’d be taken to the Helicarrier and be interrogated when he surrendered. He didn’t just want to be captured. He wanted to be here. In the Helicarrier,” Romanoff said, offering the box of Lucky Charms to Steve.

Steve took a handful out of politeness, even though he didn’t particularly feel like snacking.

“He’s playing us. And we’re stepping right into his trap. Whatever it is.” 

The box was then offered to Thor, who stared at the box for a few long seconds before pulling out a small handful.

“Loki speaks in riddles, plays with the mind, but nothing he does is ever without reason. It would certainly be wise to exercise caution around him.”

Steve popped his cereal in, a burst of sweetness exploding on his tongue. Thor followed right after, crunching down hard with his eyebrows knitted together dubiously.

“Well, is there anything of value on the Helicarrier that Loki might want?”

“Not that I know of.” Romanoff shrugged. “And besides, I’m pretty sure that sceptre of his outguns any weaponry we have here. The same sceptre that he basically handed over to us, gift-wrapped. Anything here would be worthless to him.”

It was true, and the scary thing was: Loki had already established that he didn’t need to arm himself to be a threat. He was stronger than Steve, had magic that functioned differently than anything known on earth. He basically had every advantage to secure his victory, but he chose to surrender instead. 

“Maybe he doesn’t need to get something, but rather, _do_ something,” Romanoff suggested.

That made sense, but what could he possibly do here to help further his plans of unleashing an alien force on earth? Kill Director Fury? No, that can’t be it.

“Thor, you said Loki is your brother, do you have any idea what he might be up to?”

“Loki’s mind is…lost. He is far beyond me. Apart from vengeance - vengeance on me - I do not know what he intends to do.”

So no luck there either, and Thor would probably have been their best bet to figuring something out too.

A long pause followed, but nobody else offered any new insight.

Then Romanoff threw her last piece of marshmallow up into the air and caught it in her mouth, wiping her hands together and standing up.

“You know what, I’m gonna have a little chat with our new guest himself. Find out what he wants.”

“Take care when you see him. Loki is crafty. He preys on insecurities, feeds on doubt. It will not be an easy feat getting answers out from him,” Thor warned.

“Good to know. But don’t worry. I know what I’m doing.” Romanoff smiled, eyes suddenly becoming viper-like again. “It’s my speciality after all.”

Steve watched her go, and when the door finally slid shut, Thor reached over and picked up the Lucky Charms box from the table, scrutinising it.

“Midgardian snacks are truly curious. This Lucky Charms snack of yours is most delectable.” Thor nodded his approval, prying open the packet to help himself to a big handful. “Still not as flavoursome as the Pop-Tart, but good enough.”

Steve flashed him a polite smile.

“Enjoy the cereal, Thor,” he said, standing up as well and making his way towards the door.

Maybe now was finally time to talk to Tony.

\----------

Of course he had to enter the lab just in time to see Tony prod Dr Banner with a pointed stick.

Because on top of being a pain in the ass to work with, Tony had to go about his normal business annoying and testing people yet again.

“Hey!” Steve exclaimed. “Are you nuts?”

“Jury’s out.” Tony barely looked up at him, still peering at Dr Banner curiously. “You really have got a lid on it. What’s your secret? Mellow jazz, bongo drums, huge bag of weed?”

What..?

_“Tony.”_

“What? It’s no big deal.”

“No big deal? You’re threatening the safety of everyone on this ship,” Steve retorted, before wincing inwardly. “No offence, doc.”

Dr Banner just smiled, shrugging it off.

“Look Cap, you seriously need to take a chill pill. Well in fact, you’re threatening the sanity of everyone on board with that uptight attitude of yours.”

Steve took a deep breath in.

“…Can we talk, Tony? Outside.”

Tony tossed his stick aside, gave Steve a look, then rolled his eyes and followed him to the door, out into a secluded corner away from everyone else.

“Seriously? What is this, high school? A teacher-student meeting? I haven’t had one of those in decades.”

“Tony, please,” Steve sighed out loud.

“God I really hate it when you do that,” Tony lamented. “Exactly like my dad used to do whenever I was in his general visual field.”

Steve sighed again.

“See, you just did it again. Did you know that people say sighing reduces your life expectancy? Well, but you’re already close to hundred, so I guess that life expectancy doesn’t exactly apply here but-”

“Can we focus?”

“Fine, what? What exactly did the great Tony Stark do to disappoint you yet again? Do I need to take notes? Make a list? Pretty sure it’s a bloody long list as usual.”

Steve had to bite his lip to stop himself from sighing reflexively in response.

“I’m not trying to start a fight. I just want to _talk._ ”

“Okay then. Talk.”

“First of all, you need to be more civil. Stop-” Steve drew a breath. “Stop annoying people on purpose. Don’t be a bully.”

“A bully? Seriously? Next you’ll be telling me I deserve a timeout in the naughty corner like some-”

“I’m not finished. There’s also what happened back there in the plane,” Steve interrupted. “It was beyond reckless! You can’t just jump into things without thinking like that, Tony. Needlessly endangering yourself, getting into a fight-”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I _was_ thinking. Very clearly in fact.”

“So you let Thor in on purpose? Then got yourself beaten up by Thor on purpose too? You nearly lost Loki! Jeopardised the whole mission!”

“Okay fine, maybe I didn’t intend for him to just swoop in and take Loki like he did, but I fixed that problem myself later right? No fuss.”

“That’s not the point. We’re supposed to be a team. Teammates work together. They cooperate, and where they disagree, they compromise. They don’t go off on their own without caring about what anyone else on the team is doing. Teammates communicate with each other.”

“In case it hasn’t gotten through your thick skull yet, I don’t do this ‘teamwork’ thing. Teams are pointlessly exhausting. Inefficient. So no, I beg to differ. I work best alone.”

“I get that it’s hard, but I’m not asking you to blindly follow orders or to magically become the perfect team player. I’m just asking for you to _try_ , Tony. Can you do that at least?”

Tony stared at Steve for a few long seconds, searching hard for something in his eyes, whatever it was.

Then Tony’s phone started beeping, and the moment was lost. Tony diverted his gaze away and pulled out his phone, tapping onto the screen.

“Is it the Tesseract?” Steve asked.

“No. It’s SHIELD.”

“SHIELD?”

“I had JARVIS break into all of SHIELD’s secure files.”

“What? Why?”

“Look, I know you don’t trust SHIELD as well, and you can’t tell me you don’t think this is all very suspicious. Fury is clearly hiding something.”

“I…” Steve shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. That’s shouldn’t be our focus now. We have orders, we should follow them.”

“Well _you_ have orders, and you can go along on your merry way and follow them,” Tony proclaimed curtly, stuffing his phone back into his pocket. “Meanwhile, I have some files to read.”

_“Tony!”_

Tony ignored him, just turned tailed and walked off without another word.

When he was out of earshot, Steve finally let out that sigh he’d been holding back.

God, working with Tony was a completely different game than being friends with him.

So-

_Frustrating._

But. Well, he did have a point.

SHIELD didn’t really have the best track record when it came to honesty.

Why did they have the Tesseract in the first place? What were they doing with it? More importantly, what were they hiding?

\----------

Weapons.

SHIELD was hiding weapons.

Weapons that HYDRA used back in Steve’s day. The same weapons that killed so many people – including _Bucky_.

SHIELD was making more of such weapons.

Why? 

Steve thought he knew what he was getting into when Director Fury showed him the files and asked him to fight. He thought things have changed. That he was simply going to fight another war, just in a different century.

Turns out he was fighting the same one.

 _Again_.

Steve ripped out the gun from the case and stormed out.

\-----------

Everything quickly spiraled out of control from there.

What was supposed to be a simple talk of getting a proper explanation from Director Fury devolved into a full-blown shouting match, heated words thrown back and forth, the air so tense you could slice it with a knife.

“-Is a signal to all the realms that the earth is ready for a higher form of war,” Thor retorted.

“A higher form? You forced our hand!” Fury scoffed. “We had to come up with something.”

“A nuclear deterrent. Because that always calms everything down,” Tony cut in.

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark.”

Tony’s eye flashed, and things got even more out of hand.

\----------

“I mean, what are we? A team?” Banner laughed. “No, we’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re a time bomb.”

There was no hiding how agitated the normally calm doctor was now, slight traces of acidic magic leaking out. That wasn’t good. Not at all.

“You need to step away,” Director Fury said.

That was evidently the wrong thing to say, and Banner laughed again. No trace of humour whatsoever.

“You know, why shouldn’t the guy let off some steam anyway?” Tony quipped, similarly irked.

Steve’s lips immediately arranged itself into a scowl, letting loose a long, exasperated groan.

“You know exactly why, Tony. Can’t you tell when to back off?!”

“Oh my _god_. There it is again, the annoying patriot who thinks he’s so righteous and perfect all over. Newsflash, you were outdated _seventy_ years ago.”

“Some things are still wrong no matter what century, and you? You’re being a bully,” Steve said through clenched teeth.

“And you’re being spectacularly aggravating. You’re not my mom, and you sure as hell aren’t my _dad_ , you’re just a nobody! You need to stop pretending like you know-”

“I’m not pretending to be anything! You need to grow the hell up and learn-”

“ _Grow up?_ Me? Remind me again who’s the one still trapped in the god damned 1940s dreaming of dead people. Because if anyone needs to grow up, I can assure you it’s certainly not me.”

That stung hard.

But two could play the same game and Steve was more than done playing civil.

“Always ready with a comeback. You know, you may have money, power, intelligence, but I was wrong about you.” Tony’s expression was already changing, but Steve was far from done, already fully on board destined for the train-wreck. “You don’t care about anything other than yourself. You’re not special. Just a sad, self-obsessed man living in the shadow of his dead father.”

Steve immediately clamped his mouth shut, feeling as if he just got dunked back in the ice. Oh god, what on earth was wrong with him?

“Special? Oh, you mean like you?” Tony mocked back, eyes blazing. “In case you haven’t realised, everything special of you came out of a fucking _bottle_.”

Another perfect bullseye striking him where Tony knew would hurt most and the fire in Steve lashed out again like a crack of a whip, preparing another snide remark to retort back when Dr Banner suddenly snorted a laugh.

“Wow. Yeah, this is a _team_.”

“Agent Romanoff,” Director Fury sighed, “would you escort Dr Banner back to his-”

“Where? You rented my room,” Banner rebutted, more magic seeping out, acrid and dry.

“The cell was just-”

“-In case you needed to kill me. But you can’t. I know, I _tried_.”

The room fell completely silent.

“I got low. Didn’t see an end. So I put a bullet in my mouth, and the other guy spit it out,” Banner said quietly, gaze clouded over.

“So I moved on. I focused on helping other people. I was good.” Banner looked up, eyes all fired up again with the faintest trace of green. “Until you dragged me back into this freak show and put everyone here at risk!” 

Nobody responded.

“You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff? You want to know how I stay calm?”

All the hairs on Steve’s arm stood up, and he had to fight to keep his magic in check, already ready to burst out and protect him from harm.

The air got even tenser, quiet too, so much so that Steve could almost hear everyone’s hearts pounding in their chest. Beat after beat.

And that was when he realised Banner’s hands had suddenly slithered to Loki’s sceptre, fingers making themselves at home wrapped around the sleek metal.

“Dr Banner,” Steve said, doing his best to lower his voice despite every part of him bristling and wanting to explode out. “Put down the sceptre.”

It was obvious the doctor didn’t even realise he’d been holding it. Banner flinched, staring long and hard at the sceptre.

Magic was pulsing out from the sceptre, the scent long soaked in the room, steady and weirdly…intoxicating. Like a siren’s call reeling him in, adding fuel to the fire already raging inside of him.

Steve had to force himself to take a step back, distancing himself from that strange weapon.

What the hell? How long had the sceptre been releasing its magic? What was-

Something started beeping softly in the room, and all tension in the room temporarily melted away.

Dr Banner put the sceptre away, strode over to the flashing computer and snarked,

“Sorry kids, you don’t get to see my party trick after all.”

“You located the Tesseract?” Thor asked, at the same time Tony said, “I can get there fastest.” 

“No, the Tesseract belongs on Asgard. No human is a match for it.”

But Tony was already making his way to the exit, ignoring everything else. Again jumping into another fight without thinking. Just doing whatever the hell he wanted regardless of anything and anyone like a selfish, annoying- 

Steve immediately stomped down hard on that flare of irritation that erupted up, reaching out to pull him back.

“Tony, you’re not going alone.”

“What, are you gonna stop me?” Tony slapped his hand away, eyes set aflame again.

“Don’t make me,” Steve couldn’t help but snap back. God, what was _wrong_ with him?

“You know, I’m not afraid to hit you, old man.”

And that. Was. _It_.

Steve had reached the very last strand of patience with this man and-

His ears twitched up, barely catching the faintest hiss overlaying the silence in the air. Like air being sucked in. Preparing for a scream.

Steve completely froze, a chill shooting down his spine.

A scent of something searing hot filled the air, fiery and all too familiar. _Magic_. Raw, potent. Like a burst of gunpowder exploding in the room and settling down onto Steve’s skin in that exact same way before-

Steve immediately jerked back. 

Tony’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, at the same time Thor asked, “what is that?”, but there was no time left to waste. 

“GET BACK!!” Steve yelled as he hurled himself at Tony, summoning as much magic as he could possibly muster in that one split second when-

Everything exploded. All that stray magic finally ignited in a flare of red, flinging everyone back and shattering every glass panel in sight.

Alarms started blaring out, muffled by the ringing in Steve’s ears. He coughed once from the ground, shaking aside the fresh wave of dizziness to push himself off Tony – still breathing and very much alive. Oh fuck thank god for his magic.

The air was sweltering hot, and Steve didn’t even need to scent the air to estimate the scale of the magic detonation, let alone begin to assess how much was destroyed. All the spontaneous fires in the distance and the ground quaking precariously made it fairly obvious.

Something critical had just been destroyed.

Adrenaline immediately flooded through his system, heart launched into a brutal rhythm and muting the burning pains away and out of awareness.

There was no time to care about anything else now. Steve scrambled back on his feet, hastily pulling Tony up.

“Put on the suit,” he commanded.

For once, Tony didn’t make a single protest.

“Yeah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the very long and late update. I promise you I have every intention of finishing this AU. Hope you enjoy reading and hope everyone enjoyed watching Endgame (or not? :P) 
> 
> Thank you for your patience and your support <3

**Author's Note:**

> Most of the story is already written out, so I'll do my very best to update once every week until it's done! 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoy!


End file.
